
C.OPYRIGET DEPOSm 



FRANCE 
UNDER THE REPUBLIC 



;^ii:;;?aiiE 



lllll-liH^^^^^^^^^^^ 







LOUIS ADOLPHE THIERS 



FRANCE 
UNDER THE REPUBLIC 



BY 

JEAN CHARLEMAGNE BRACQ 

LITT.D., LL.D. 
Professor of French Literature in Vassar College 



NEW AND REVISED EDITIOMT 



NEW YORK 

CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 

1916 



JIC33S 

■,37 



Copyright, 1910, 1916, by 
Charles Scribner's Sons 





'CI,A43785^ 



PREFACE TO THE SECOND 
EDITION 

The first edition of this volume was pub- 
lished at a time when Conservatives and Cleri- 
cals in France were asserting and reasserting 
her decadence. The book was intended as an 
answer to these pessimistic charges. It was an 
honest attempt to inventory the constructive 
work of the nation under the Republic, to gauge 
French life, not by those rhetorical assertions 
so frequently made by its official defenders, but 
by a calm statement of facts. Though well re- 
ceived by the public at large, a few accused it 
of excessive optimism. The writer again and 
again reiterated that there were great evils in 
the land of his birth ; some of them he pointed 
out at length; others he assumed, perhaps with- 
out sufficient warrant, were known to his read- 
ers. To show the wholesome growth of the 
country, he produced a large array of evidence, 
very little of which has been contradicted, and 
all of which demonstrated the untenableness of 
the assertions of the opponents of the Republic. 
The terrible test of life and character to which 



vi PREFACE 

the nation has been subjected during the last 
twenty months has more than confirmed his 
conclusions. 

The writer has used the word "Republic" in a 
chronological and not in a causal sense, though 
the form of government has been a factor in 
the results which he sets forth. Following the 
example of biologists, he has taken a cross- 
section of the recent life of France, and has 
shown its healthfulness by its functions and 
growth. He never claimed that the progress 
indicated had existed only under the present 
government, but that the Republic helps this 
growth and, as an historical landmark, fur- 
nishes us with a definite sweep of time in which 
to measure it. With all its deficiencies, it is 
the government which, in the long run, has 
best furthered the development of the latent 
powers of the people. 

Some important changes have been made in 
this edition involving the introduction of new 
matter. The extracts from moral text-books, 
showing their decided religious character, have 
been eliminated, now that the reasons which de- 
manded their publication no longer exist, but 
the general structure of the book has not been 
disturbed. Wherever possible the facts given 
have been brought up to date; otherwise they 



PREFACE vii 

have remained untouched. The word now, used 
frequently, refers to the period immediately pre- 
ceding the present war. The author gratefully 
acknowledges the many suggestions made by his 
colleague. Professor Burges Johnson, which he 
has incorporated in this text. He has nothing 
to change in his estimates of the illustrious land 
which he has ever defended. The conviction 
expressed in 1910 has become an absolute cer- 
tainty in 1916. He feels that when the present 
conflict is over, France, her head high after her 
great victories — moral above all — will resume 
her march forward according to her humane 
genius, along the path of civilisation and peace. 

Jean Charlemagne Bracq. 

Vassab College, 
April 18, 1916. 



CONTENTS 

CHAPTES PASB 

Preface to the Second Edition .... v 

Chronological Table xi 

I. The Work of Political Reconstruction 1 

II. The Transformation and Expansion of 

France 31 

III. The Development of Commerce and 

Wealth 57 

IV. The New Education in the New Life . 75 

V. Changes in Literature, Art, and Phi- 
losophy 95 

VI. The New Activity in History and Sci- 
ence 124 

VII. Social Reform and Philanthropy . . . 152 

VIII. Social Improvement and Morality . . 173 

IX. Religious Doubt and Religion .... 190 

X. The Contemporary Frenchman in the 

New Life 207 

XL Moral Instruction in French Schools 229 

XII. The Dispersion of the Unauthorised 

Religious Orders 252 

ix 



X CONTENTS 

CHAPTKB PASS 

XIII. The Separation of ChurCh and State . 280 

XIV. The Crisis of the Separation of Church 307 

AND State ..... 

XV. Contemporary French Protestantism . 329 

Index 361 



ILLUSTRATIONS 

Louis Adolphe Thiers Frontispiece - 

TAcma 

PAQS 

Mabshal Mac-M.ihon 12 

JuimEs Gbevy , 60 ^ 

Jules Ferry 82 

Leon Gambetta 98 ' 

Marie F. S. Carnot 140 '^ 

Raymond Poincaire 230 ^^ 

Jean Leon Jaures 312 ^ 



FRANCE 
UNDER THE REPUBLIC 



FRANCE UNDER THE REPUBLIC 



CHAPTER I 

THE WORK OF POLITICAL RECON- 
STRUCTION 

"XT^OUNG man," said Renan to Paul De- 
I roulede, ''France is dying; do not 
disturb her agony." ^ Thus at the end 
of the War of 1870 the French philosopher 
voiced not only his own feelings but also those 
of many other eminent French thinkers. Two 
beloved provinces had just been wrested from 
France, 1,900,000 of her subjects had been 
compelled to become Germans, twenty-six de- 
partments were occupied by the invaders, the 
Commune with its horrors, the disorganisation 
of public services, the lack of national coherence 
which Taine called "spontaneous dissolution"^ 
and "social decomposition,"^ the collapse of 
finances, the clamours of the clergy for a war 
with Italy, the petty intrigues of parties, the 

^ Moreland, J., Enquete sur Vinfluence allemande, 1903, p. 11. 

* H. Taine, sa vie et sa correspondance, vol. Ill, p. 67. 

• Ibid., p. 71. 

I 



2 FRANCE UNDER THE REPUBLIC 

prevailing mistrust, all seemed to justify the 
pessimism of two of France's greatest men. Yet 
the people did not despair. 

The Commune, that horrible misunderstand- 
ing — which impelled some men to take up 
arms for lofty social reasons, some for the de- 
fence of local liberties, and others from sheer 
love of disorder — was put down with great 
severity, tempered later on with mercy. ^ By a 
superb outburst of patriotism, long to be remem- 
bered, the French people, after having faced 
burdensome financial obligations and paid $400,- 
000,000 to Germany, at the appeal of M. Thiers 
for $600,000,000 more to settle the war indem- 
nity, came forward with $8,000,000,000.^ This 
enabled the provisional government, before the 
time appointed by the Treaty of Frankfort, to 
hasten the departure of German soldiers from 
France. No achievement of the Republic has 
ever received such co-operation of all classes 
and of all parties. The civil service, purged of 
many of the politicians of the Empire, was 
rapidly restored and efficiently reorganised, 
though it was impossible to eliminate from it 

^ Bourloton et Robert, La commune et ses idSes a travers Vhistoire, 
Paris, 1872; Washburne, E. B., Recollections of a Minister to France, 
New York, 1887; Hanotaux, G., Contemporary France, New York, 
1903, vol. I, p. 158. 

2 Revue des Deux Mondes, Aug. 1, 1872, p. 696; Le Goff, The Life 
of Louis Adolphe Thiers, New York, 1879, p. 241. 



POLITICAL RECONSTRUCTION S 

that favouritism which has existed under all 
regimes. 

The most difficult problem of all was to decide 
upon the character of the future institutions of 
the country. Various governments were possi- 
ble. The Legitimists, posing as the makers of 
French history, sustained by the nobility as well 
as by the clergy, had a fair political outlook, for 
they appealed to the religious and to the polit- 
ical traditions of the country. They would have 
succeeded had not the Comte de Chambord 
clung to his Bourbon white flag and refused to 
accept the tricolour.^ The Orleanists were not 
without encouraging prospects, for they repre- 
sented a popular form of monarchy, friendly to 
the Church, to progress, and to modern culture. 
They held up before moderate Frenchmen the 
not distant possibility of a constitutional gov- 
ernment like that of Great Britain, while the 
Comte de Paris, by his past history, as well as 
by the signal beauty of his life, inspired the 
greatest sympathy. Moreover, his cause was 
sustained by men who were the most brilliant 
and popular opponents of the Empire in its last 
days. The Imperialists, on their side, could still 
depend upon all the beneficiaries of the previous 

^ Hanotaux, G., Contemporary France, New York, 1903, vol. I, p. 
256; Seignobos, Histoire politique de V Europe contemporaine, p. 184. 



4 FRANCE UNDER THE REPUBLIC 

rule, upon those who had held important sine- 
cures, upon men with dictatorial instincts, and 
upon those who still idealised the military 
achievements of the first Napoleon. Masses of 
toilers still recalled the days of exceptional 
prosperity — not those of adversity — under a 
government which had led France through the 
Crimean War, the War of Italy, the War of 
Mexico to Sedan. They remembered par- 
ticularly the festivals, the brilliant pageants, but 
not the corrupt regime and its pitiful collapse. 
They would have been happy to try Napoleonic 
rule again. 

The Republicans had a decidedly inauspi- 
cious outlook. They stood before the public 
as the political visionaries and Utopians of the 
land. Their principles seemed particularly ideal- 
istic and fanciful to those who posed as prac- 
tical men. In Taine's eyes, the Republic was 
"less possible in France than anywhere else."^ 
Their conception of government was repugnant 
to the conservative masses who were essentially 
hostile to the idea of political progress. Their 
aspirations ran full tilt against the ideals of 
the CathoHc Church. The horrors of the French 
Revolution — not its beneficent effects — were 
still associated in the Catholic mind with a re- 

^Op. cit.,p. 121. 



POLITICAL RECONSTRUCTION 5 

publican regime, while the blunders of the Re- 
public of 1848 seemed to many inseparable 
from republican rule. The upholders of demo- 
cratic ideals were maliciously made responsible 
for the Commune, and represented as leaning 
toward socialism, then the terror of all respect- 
able Frenchmen. In such circumstances, a re- 
public seemed but a distant possibility. Yet 
this was the government imposed upon the 
nation, not by a deliberate choice, but by a 
hard, harsh necessity.^ A republic had, at 
least, theoretic chances of stabihty for which 
the people greatly longed, while the triumph of 
the Monarchists would have doomed the coun- 
try to an endless series of disturbances and 
revolutions. Again, any one of the three other 
parties, raised to power, would have removed 
all hopes from the opposition, while the Republic 
■" — for a while at least — kept them alive. Mul- 
titudes rallied to this political experiment but 
without any enthusiasm, with the feeling that 
it was the only possible peaceful government, 
and the one they wanted. 

A good constitution — not the wisest that 



^ It is said that, on the evening when the National Assembly ac- 
cepted the republican form of government, the wife of the President, 
MacMahon, said to some one sitting near her at dinner: "At last we 
have it, that rascally Republic." (Avenel, Comte Georges d'. Lea Fran- 
gais de man temps, p. 20.) 



6 FRANCE UNDER THE REPUBLIC 

could be conceived but the best one for France, 
adapted to national needs, and capable of sub- 
sequent readjustments — was framed. It was 
not a high-sounding decalogue like most of its 
predecessors, but one susceptible of modifica- 
tions which experience might suggest. The 
slight changes introduced into it, in 1875, 1884, 
1885, and 1889, tend to show the wisdom of 
those who framed it. No country has elected 
its presidents more easily, more rapidly, or, as a 
whole, more successfully. The method of elec- 
tion provided by the constitution has proven a 
superb instrument of selection. Thiers, Mac- 
Mahon, Grevy, Carnot, Faure, Casimir-Perier, 
Loubet, Fallieres, and Poincare constitute a line 
of presidents of a fairly large mental calibre, of 
great dignity of life and eflSciency. Without be- 
ing blind to some of their limitations, where 
is the land whose chief magistrates during the 
same period would offer a finer record ? So real 
have been the services rendered by them that 
no one now, as in the early days of the Republic, 
speaks of abolishing the oflSce of president. 

In the executive machinery, also, a great 
change has taken place. Several ministers have 
been added to those already existing. Agri- 
culture, the colonies, and labour came to have 
their distinct places in the administration of the 



POLITICAL RECONSTRUCTION 7 

country. The efficiency of the ministries has 
been increased by the gradual introduction of 
under secretaries of state, and by the co-opera- 
tion of elected superior councils whose members 
are men of special competence chosen by their 
peers. The ministries thereby became to some 
extent representative institutions controlled by 
the Parliament. When this change took place 
for education, Jules Ferry rightly said that that 
ministry had ceased to be an administration, 
"to become an organised and living body."^ 
The ministries are not simply executive, but also 
agencies carrying on extensivb investigations 
and studies upon innumerable subjects affect- 
ing the national works and policies in many di- 
rections. The cabinets may change, but the 
regular officials of the ministries seldom do. 

It is owing to this that one sees designs 
planned and carried out with remarkable con- 
tinuity of purpose. The gradual control of 
North Africa by France is a notable illustration 
of this. The steady diplomatic policy since 1887 
is another. Many other instances might be ad- 
duced to show the working of the permanent 
and unchangeable elements in the ministries. 
The cabinets, until recent years, were short- 
lived, and that was ascribed to French fickle- 

* Rambaud, A., Jules Ferry, Paris, 1903, p. 102. 



8 FRANCE UNDER THE REPUBLIC 

ness; but critics failed to recall that the min- 
istries were not constituted so much with a view 
to longevity as to national security. French legis- 
lators wished to avoid the repetition of Na- 
poleonic dictatorship and of coups d'Etat. Even 
from the point of view of duration there is 
progress. While there were fifteen different 
ministries during the first decade of the Republic, 
there have been only five during the last ten 
years -^ This increasing permanence of cabinets 
has often been secured at the cost of the favours 
of ministers to deputies who endeavour to ob- 
tain offices for their constituents; but even at 
this point the spoils system has never gone to 
the extreme which it has attained in some other 
countries. The wonder is that, with a system 
whereby a majority against one single proposal 
of a minister entails the overthrow of a whole 
cabinet, ministerial changes should not have 
been more numerous. 

The Senate is perhaps the most perfect work 
of the Republic. It has had among its members 
scientists like Wurtz, Berthelot, Broca; philos- 
ophers like Littre and Jules Simon ; literary men 
like Scherer and Deschanel pere; religious men 
like Dupanloup and Edmond de Pressense; 
royal spirits representing all shades of political 

1 Before 1910. 



POLITICAL RECONSTRUCTION 9 

opinions, Laboulaye, Challemel-Lacour, d'Au- 
diffret-Pasquier, Jaureguiberry, Haussonville 
pere, Grevy, and Francis Charmes, the editor of 
the Revue des Deux Mondes. It contains now 
the flower of French pohtical intelHgence. We 
see at its sessions de Freycinet, Berenger^ Bour- 
geois, de Marcere, de Lamarzelle, de Courcel, 
Delpech, Dupuy (Ch.), Mezieres, Clemenceau, 
Meline, Combes, Ribot, Siegfried, Rouvier, 
Ranc, Lintillac, Loze, d'Estournelles de Cons- 
tant, Ph. Berger, and Trouillot. It would be 
difficult to find another upper house in the 
world representing so much personal and polit- 
ical worth. 

In the intention of its founders the Senate 
was, above all, to be a conservative institution. 
Gambetta, who, like most of his followers, op- 
posed it at the outset, came to recognise its im- 
portance; then he spoke of it as *'the Great 
Council of the Towns of France," a necessary 
check upon the Chamber of Deputies, the organ 
of French democracy as organised in cities.^ 
At first it owed its superiority to the fact that 
its members might be selected by the govern- 
ment from among the most distinguished sons 
of France, outside of the political machinery. 
Now it has the signal advantage of drawing its 

* Adam, Mme. Ed., Nos amities politiqnes, Paris, 1908, p. 244, 



10 FRANCE UNDER THE REPUBLIC 

members mostly from the deputies. The elected 
are better senators because they have been dep- 
uties, and often because they have been good 
deputies. The experience gained in the pop- 
ular Chamber brings its best fruition in the 
Senate. Deputies are naturally drawn to the 
Luxembourg by the longer term of office, nine 
years instead of four, by the greater indepen- 
dence which they enjoy from their constituents, 
by the more dignified function and the greater 
honour. Senators are more carefully chosen 
than any other French representatives and by a 
smaller, more intelligent and select electorate. 
Thus, of the following senators sent to the two 
houses, Meline had 8,238 votes as a deputy and 
659 as a senator; Francis Charmes was sent to 
the Palais-Bourbon with 4,171 votes and to the 
Luxembourg with 288; Charles Dupuy was 
made deputy by 10,201 votes and senator by 
480.^ The Senate has been all along an in- 
telligent moderating and controlling power, 
often preventing hasty and unwise legislation. 
The slow ascent of its members from the Cham- 
ber of Deputies helps to create a homogeneity 
in Parliament which could not exist otherwise. 
It tends to eliminate the former aristocrats and 



^ Ribeyre, F., La nouvelle chambre, 1889-1893; Grenier, A. S., Noa 
senateurs, 1906-1909. 



POLITICAL RECONSTRUCTION 11 

the ultra conservatives on behalf of more demo- 
cratic and progressive elements. 

The Chamber of Deputies has often voiced 
the political effervescence of the land and re- 
flected the spirit of its politicians. It has dema- 
gogues, radical demagogues and clerical dema- 
gogues, but judged by its best it would still bear 
a favourable comparison with any popular house 
of representatives on the continent. It suffers 
unquestionably from the elimination of its 
ablest members through their promotion to the 
Senate, but the new men are in closer touch 
with national feelings, more alert and earnest. 
They are less likely to become fossilised. Many 
of the disturbances of this house have been due 
to the parliamentary inexperience of the coun- 
try. When the National Assembly gathered at 
Bordeaux, in 1871, there were distinguished men 
in its midst, such as the Due d'Aumale, Thiers, 
Bishop Dupanloup, Prince de Joinville, General 
Chanzy, General Changarnier, Jules Simon, 
Leon Say, Gambetta, de Broglie, and Jules 
Favre — uncommon men, but as a whole not 
yielding the elements of a good national repre- 
sentation. Most of them were royalists incapa- 
ble of reading aright the wants of the French 
nation. The Assembly was really composed of 
men unknown to one another and hardly ac- 



n FRANCE UNDER THE REPUBLIC 

quainted with the real needs of France.* Con- 
tentions -without number have arisen because of 
the dual spirit of the members of Parliament, 
some representing the old spirit of the Church 
and the privileges of aristocracy, while the others 
were upholders of absolute political equality. 

One other reason for the frequent turmoils in 
this house is that French legislators have a far 
more difficult task to perform than the legis- 
lators of the United States because they have 
to deal with questions which, in this country, 
are settled by the states. The commotions in 
the lower house are also occasioned by the im- 
portance of the issue discussed. Since the con- 
tentions over slavery, in the legislative halls of 
the United States, no such burning questions 
have been before American legislators as that 
of the secularisation of French schools, the dis- 
persion of the unauthorised orders, and the 
separation of Church and State. 

It should also be remembered that, as the 
Chamber of Deputies has the initiative in the 
matter of new laws, these are presented in a 
rough and indefinite form which is likely to 
excite bitter antagonism. Furthermore, the ma- 
jority of deputies have the restlessness of pro- 
gressive men. The so-called unruly elements 

^ Scheurer-Kestner, Souvenirs de jeunesw, 1905, p. 241. 




MARSHAL MAC-MA HON 



POLITICAL RECONSTRUCTION 13 

have been those which have forced the Parha- 
ment to devise and to do. As a whole, the Sen- 
ate has represented a wise conservatism, not 
unfriendly to change; and the lower house, a 
fearless, if at times impatient, spirit of progress. 
The Senate is still, at least in part, inspired by 
the political liberalism of the French Revolu- 
tion, but the House of Deputies has directed its 
efforts toward social legislation, and endeavoured 
to remove some of the traditional injustice in 
contemporary society. The deputies have their 
unworthy members, but as a whole they do not 
deserve the sweeping denunciations of their ene- 
mies. The charge made against them that they 
are hostile to religion and bitter against religious 
ideas may be applied to only a few of the mem- 
bers. M. Paul Sabatier mentions religious 
speeches made before the deputies and listened 
to with perfect courtesy.^ The interesting but 
long religious discourses of M. Eugene Reveil- 
laud during the discussion of the Law of Separa- 
tion would not have been heard so respectfully 
by American congressmen as they were by 
French deputies.^ As to those who have system- 
atically opposed both houses, it is difficult to 
speak with much praise. They have all along 

^ Lettre ouverte d S. E. Cardinal Gibbons, pp. 38 and 39. 
* Reveillaud, E., La separation des eglises de VEtat, Paris, 1901, pp. 
239, 324, and 396. 



14 FRANCE UNDER THE REPUBLIC 

betrayed the cause of true conservatism by a 
tactless opposition. They have never known 
how to defend their interests properly by making 
needful concessions to rising democracy. They 
have often joined their own bitterest enemies to 
overthrow a moderate cabinet, bringing thereby 
to power those from whom they had most to 
fear. Comte Georges d'Avenel, a distinguished 
member of the French nobility, does not hesi- 
tate to recognise this fact.* 

The general councils {conseils generaux), or 
department assemblies, mere shams of local gov- 
ernment under the Empire, have, with the Re- 
public, become efficient instruments of provin- 
cial service and of decentralisation. Apart from 
their functions, which are constantly extended 
by new prerogatives, these councils have often 
voiced local feelings in such a manner and so 
concurrently with the Parliament as to leave no 
doubt as to the real state of the national mind 
upon any policy. Through these councils local 
interests have an organ of representation, and 
local ideas a voice, heard by the nation when 
necessary. 

Though vexatious at times, the prefect is no 
longer the imperial satrap of Napoleon, before 
whom every one trembled. When he exceeds 

^ Les Frangais de mon temps^ Paris, 1904, p. 41. 



POLITICAL RECONSTRUCTION 15 

his rights, the representatives of local author- 
ity — now that there is a local independent 
authority — do not hesitate to remind him of it, 
or to have the matter brought before the Parlia- 
ment. The prefect is still the representative of 
the central government, and, as a rule, a cour- 
teous and correct official. With the exception 
of Paris, which, like Washington, has a com- 
munalistic regime of its own, all municipalities 
are absolutely free in the choice of mayor, as 
well as in that of the members of their munic- 
ipal councils. The towns have never had so much 
local government, and never have they devised 
more measures of local utiHty. With this has 
come a new municipal spirit of reform, progress, 
and enterprise. The writer could mention cities 
and villages, the progress of which reminds him 
of the advance of American communities. 

One great change which has taken place is 
that the people are not at the mercy of public 
officials as under the Second Empire. There is 
nothing left of that awful hi de surete generate, 
whereby one could be arrested, exiled to other 
countries, sent to deadly penal colonies without 
any form of trial. ^ Exceptionally imperfect as 

^ Rambaud, Histoire de la dvilisatiojn cdntemporaine en France, Paris, 
1901, p. 520; Scheurer-Kestner, Souvenirs de jeunesse, p. 101; Seche, 
Leon, Jules Simon, Paris, 1905, p. 74; Adam, Mme. Ed., Nos amities 
'politiques, p. 8. 



16 FRANCE UNDER THE REPUBLIC 

the judiciary is at times, there recurs no such 
parody of justice as the famous Proces des Treize^ 
when the imperial government had thirteen 
hberals condemned under the most futile pre- 
texts.^ Similarly has disappeared the Cabinet 
noir, in which the correspondence of suspected 
citizens could be, and was, examined by the 
government.^ 

All the changes which we have sketched have 
been encouraged and upheld by the suffrage of 
the nation, which has never been so free or so 
intelligent. Frenchmen in office, whether in 
politics or in the Church, have always used 
their influence at the ballot-box on behalf of 
their friends — they still do, and often with de- 
testable methods — but the fact remains that 
the individual voter has never been so inde- 
pendent. Those who have known the candi- 
datures officielles of Napoleon III smile when they 
hear criticism of the republican elections in 
which there is much, indeed, to condemn. Then, 
representatives of employers would visit the 
workingmen and practically give them orders to 
vote for the candidate patronised by the firm. 
Now, the workingmen may be bidden by labour- 
unions — these labour-unions aflfect only a lim- 

^ Rambaud, Jules Ferry, p. 9. 

* Scheurer-Kestner, Mes souvenirs, pp. 110, 115, and 117; Larousse, 
Grand dictionnaire universel, vol. XVI. 



POLITICAL RECONSTRUCTION 17 

ited number of voters — to sustain some fa- 
vourites. The beneficiary of the government 
does what he can to influence votes. The admin- 
istration helps its favoured candidates, but the 
fact remains that the voter, even so, can dispose 
of his ballot more freely than ever before. 

The idea of liberty for all free French citi- 
zens, which was opposed at every step by the 
Empire, has carried the day. This is evident 
if we consider four highly important laws con- 
ceding new liberties. There is the law of June 
10, 1881, granting freedom to hold meetings; 
that of July 31, 1881, sanctioning the freedom 
of the press; that of March 21, 1884, allowing 
the organisation of trades-unions and of various 
labour societies; and that of July 1, 1901, con- 
ceding freedom to organise corporations and 
associations. It may be asserted that as a 
whole the Republicans, in the midst of men 
systematically opposed to their ideals, have en- 
deavoured to secure for the greatest possible 
number of citizens a maximum of liberty and 
justice. In so doing conflicts have come. No 
live nation can advance without them, but in 
the struggles for better things these conflicts 
have scarcely interfered with good civil service 
and progressive life. Mr. Bodley, an English 
gentleman ever unfriendly to the Republic, was 



18 FRANCE UNDER THE REPUBLIC 

obliged to recognise its good government. *'I 
would be perplexed," lie says, "to mention 
three nations which on the whole are better 
governed than France."^ 

The increase of freedom for individuals has 
been, as just noted, extended to organisations. 
So great were the obstacles placed in their way, 
even during the last days of the Empire, that 
it was difficult to create any form of association, 
or to keep it alive. The consequence was that 
societies were few. Foreign ethnographers had 
noticed this, and ascribed it to racial traits — 
racial traits at that time explained everything. 
With the freedom of the Republic associations 
of all kinds sprang up in every direction. A 
little city that had two or three societies will 
now count them by the score. Commercial 
companies rose from 4,338 in 1884 to 7,133 in 
1910; trades-unions from 175 to 14,842; mu- 
tual-benefit societies from 7,743 to 21,079.2 Ac- 
cording to the Journal des Debats^^ co-operative 

1 France, New York, 1898, vol. I, p. 44. 

2 Annuaire statistique, 1913. This work, to which we refer so often, 
is prepared under the direction of most eminent and competent men such 
as F. R. Stourm, whom we would call the President of the Academy of 
Moral and Political Sciences; C. Colson, member of this same body 
and professor of political economy at the Paris Law School; the well- 
known J. Bertillon; the courageous and liberal economist, Yves Guyot, 
and other reliable members of the Council of General Statistics of France, 
having imder them well-trained scientific statisticians at the Ministry 
of Labour. 

» April 15, 1906. 



POLITICAL RECONSTRUCTION 19 

societies have increased in membership thirty- 
six times from 1870 to 1899. 

This union and sociahsation of efforts has 
shown itself in a multitude of religious works, 
of philosophical, scientific, philanthropic, and 
artistic associations. As soon as Frenchmen 
were able they took advantage of their free- 
dom to organise associations so essential to 
progress. 

This associational movement is not without 
its dangers. The rise of great organisations 
will doubtless create frequent conflicts with the 
State, but national security will be found in the 
principles of political equality, which are sink- 
ing profoundly into the national consciousness. 
Be that as it may, it is strange to find that, at 
the beginning of this twentieth century, the old 
Napoleonic law of 1810, that no more than 
twenty persons could meet together without 
the permission of the government, was still on 
the statute book. This legal landmark of 
former despotism had been subjected to the at- 
tacks of liberals from the days of Louis-Philippe 
to our own. In 1901, Waldeck-Rousseau put 
an end to that anachronism. Freedom of as- 
sociation was fully granted to all groups of 
citizens, but not to unauthorised religious orders 
which, with the various monastic associations. 



£0 FRANCE UNDER THE REPUBLIC 

had been so constant in their opposition to 
popular Uberty. 

It is probable that at no distant period even 
these restraints upon the orders will be removed. 
By the separation of Church and State, the 
country has also been freed from one of the 
most despotic political rules to which the clergy 
of the land was ever subjected, the Concordat. 
Whatever one may think of the manner in 
which it was abrogated, there can be no doubt 
as to the tyrannical character of that celebrated 
document, and of the Organic Articles that went 
with it, both of which were long and fully ac- 
cepted by the Church.^ Now Catholic priests, 
as far as the government is concerned, are 
liberated from all the restraints of bygone days. 
Religious bodies, persecuted under the Empire, 
now enjoy the greatest liberty. Baptists, Meth- 
odists, Theosophists, Buddhists, and Comtists 
have the right to preach and practise their 
pecuhar tenets like Catholics, under the droit 
commun. Moslems are now building a mosque 
in Paris. 

The development of the press, more than any- 
thing else, perhaps, enables us to gauge the 
extension of liberty. The harassed journalism 
of the Second Empire, daily exposed to ruinous 

» See Chapters. XV and XVI. 



POLITICAL RECONSTRUCTION 21 

fines, to the incarceration of the editor, seems to 
belong to another age than ours. Ranc was con- 
demned to four months' imprisonment for an 
article not half so violent as those of the opposi- 
tion to-day.^ The manager or the printer of a 
paper could be arrested with the editor. The 
paper might be suppressed, thereby bringing 
about the bankruptcy of the owner. An internal- 
revenue tax was collected upon each number of 
any paper issued. All this has been replaced 
by a thoroughly independent and often ex- 
tremely reckless press. Through the sudden 
extension of liberty, whereby those who accuse 
the Republic of tyranny can assail it cease- 
lessly in their papers, the expansion of journal- 
ism has been rapid, not to say extraordinary. 
At the close of the Second Empire Paris had 
only twenty dailies, and their circulation was 
small. Even the Petit Journal had an issue of 
not more than sixty thousand. In 1898 the 
Parisian dailies had risen in number to one hun- 
dred and ten. The circulation of the Petit 
Journal has long ago passed the million mark, 
while some of its contemporaries have attained 
a corresponding increase.^ This development 

^ Adam, Mme. Ed., Nos amities politiques, p. 8. 

* From 1880 to 1908 the number of dailies rose from 48 to 380 and the 
newspapers and periodicals from 2,980 to 9,877. {Annuaire de la presse 
francaise, 1909.) 



22 FRANCE UNDER THE REPUBLIC 

of the press has told potently upon the indi- 
vidual, has often kept him at home, and helped 
the growth of personality. 

The same freedom has been extended to lit- 
erature. The Republic, for good or evil, has 
abolished the censure of literary and especially 
of dramatic works, assuming that the best cen- 
sor, in this domain, is public opinion. The im- 
perial laws, preventing the unfettered peddling 
of books, of pamphlets, of papers and pictures, 
were repealed; and the new statutes, as far as 
this domain is concerned, apply only to porno- 
graphic works. 

The same generalising of freedom has been 
applied to the opening of saloons, and that with 
unfortunate results. A great change has also 
taken place in reference to travel and residence. 
Formerly there was a real inquisitorial system. 
Travellers were subjected to numerous formal- 
ities more or less vexatious, and even to the sur- 
veillance of spies in hotels. Any citizen travel- 
ling at a distance of fifteen or twenty miles from 
home was expected to carry papers, a labourer 
to have his livret} The poor workingman was 
often prohibited from going to Paris or to other 
large centres to earn his livelihood, but now all 

* Book of identity delivered by the authorities to the workingman, 
without which he could not secure any labour. The Republic has done 
away with it. 



POLITICAL RECONSTRUCTION 23 

may go with the utmost freedom, and without 
annoyance, wherever they wish. Travel and 
transportation have been released from the ir- 
ritating control of papers and passports. The 
new spirit has broken through the national ex- 
clusiveness, and foreigners may be naturalised 
more readily than before. 

Nothing can give a better idea of the work of 
the Republic than the general trend of legisla- 
tion. Something has been done — much more 
remains to be done — to free the child from ab- 
solute paternal authority which is still the sur- 
vival of Roman law. The former power of 
parents to prevent the marriage of their children 
has been greatly restricted, and that with good 
results. The French code now allows the judi- 
ciary to take away children from the care of 
vicious parents. The legal status of woman 
has been raised. Women at the head of com- 
mercial houses, or of large industrial pursuits, 
have the right to vote at elections for judges of 
the tribunal of commerce; they may be wit- 
nesses in matters of deeds or other legal docu- 
ments; they may study and practise law, or 
devote themselves to any science or art. The 
legal and social progress has been such that a 
woman, Mme. Curie, has become a professor 
of science at the Sorbonne and occupies one of 



24 FRANCE UNDER THE REPUBLIC 

the foremost chairs of French higher education. 
A law was passed in 1891 securing to the wife 
a more equitable share in the property of her 
deceased husband. Another law has been 
passed that secures to a married woman her 
wages, which previously could be collected by her 
husband, even when he had deserted his home. 
In the case of intolerable marriage situations 
the law has provided the solution of divorce. 

The statute book now contains provisions for 
the greater protection of the accused before 
French courts. They are no longer considered 
guilty until they have proven their innocence. 
They may have legal counsel immediately after 
their arrest; and even in civil cases, if one of 
the parties is too poor, the State comes to his 
rescue and furnishes a competent lawyer. The 
accused in a criminal case is no longer obliged 
to stay in prison awaiting the good pleasure of 
the judge; but if his case is not ready, he may 
have conditional freedom. A new law, now 
before the Senate, guarantees the inviolability 
of the home and of the correspondence of the 
accused. The Parliament is now endeavouring 
to transfer to the civil courts, in time of peace, 
the military cases which hitherto have been de- 
cided by martial courts. 

The tendency has been to bring all misde- 



POLITICAL RECONSTRUCTION 25 

meanours exclusively before the judiciary, and 
to assert the absolute independence of the bench 
from the executive. The Dreyfus case, when 
France was divided into two camps, each having 
upon its flag. Fiat justitia, whatever else it 
show ed, showed also how, in different ways and 
at any cost, both wanted justice, both were ready 
to sacrifice for justice even national peace. 
Laws also have simplified the revision of crimi- 
nal cases, rendering it both easier and quicker. 

The fundamental principle of law-making has 
been reversed. Thus, in attempting to solve 
problems, and especially labour problems, Na- 
poleon III proceeded by notions of abstract 
justice, rather than by rules of equity growing 
out of concrete cases. The laws of the Re- 
public have been empirical, ever endeavouring 
to eliminate wrongs in conditions. The aim has 
been not so much to punish as to prevent 
wrong; it has been not individualism but sol- 
idarity. While a great ethical purpose runs 
through the new legislation, the influence of 
remarkable legal studies, the prominent part 
played by great jurists, their numerous reviews 
and rich publications have given strength and 
direction to the movement.^ The national juris- 

^ The study of the activities of French jurists would be a revelation 
to most readers. See La Science frangaisef 1915, vol. II, p. 317, 



26 FRANCE UNDER THE REPUBLIC 

prudence has been liberalised and humanised. 
The celebrated Berenger Law is a law of 
probation, which interests a culprit in his 
own moral regeneration. Incarceration before 
a trial must now be reckoned as a part of the 
total penalty. Imprisonment for debt has been 
abolished. The Republic has not only made a 
great advance in the nobler and more dignified 
administration of justice, but in seeking for 
absolute justice itself. Thus the man who has 
atoned for his guilt cannot be punished further 
by being called an "ex-convict." In the scales 
of French justice those who have endured the 
penalty of the law cannot be pursued further 
through life by a relentless social Nemesis. Na- 
ture is merciless, but justice, which rises above 
nature, must be a barrier against social ven- 
geance. 

If we turn from the consideration of the fea- 
tures of a great internal change to that of the 
adaptation of the Republic to her international 
environments, we shall be impressed by the 
progress made. In the last days of the Second 
Empire, France had been isolated by the med- 
dlesome and tactless policy of the emperor. 
He gained nothing from England by his partici- 
pation in the Crimean War, while he irritated 
Russia for years to come. He aroused the feel- 



POLITICAL RECONSTRUCTION £7 

ings of the American people by the campaign of 
Mexico, as well as by his open sympathy for the 
South during the Rebellion. He excited the 
resentment of Austrians by the War of Italy, 
without winning the gratitude of Italians; for 
while he helped them to secure their unity, he 
constituted himself the custodian of the last 
remnant of the temporal power of the Pope. 
Had the son of Hortense been willing to have 
French soldiers leave Rome, on the eve of the 
Franco-Prussian War, Austria and Italy would 
have joined France against Germany in 1870. 
In the great conflict France was thoroughly 
isolated, and the moral sentiment of the whole 
world was against her in just condemnation of 
the war, now known to have been brought about 
by Bismarck, whose supreme art was to provoke 
it and cause Napoleon to appear as the ag- 
gressor.^ This war was virtually continued by 
the Iron Chancellor, who organised the Triple 
Alliance to isolate France, while another triple 
alliance had been made between England, Italy, 
and Spain to check French action in the Mediter- 
ranean.^ The attitude of Bismarck, alarmed at 
the rapid recuperation of the country, came near 

^ See Bismarck's confession, Vienna Free Press, Nov. 20, 1892, or Le 
Temps, Nov. 23; Busch, M., Bismarck, Some Secret Pages of His His- 
tory, 1898, vol. II, p. 174; and Bismarck's Autobiography, p. 101. 

* Berard, V., La France et Guillaume II, 1907, p. 22. 



28 FRANCE UNDER THE REPUBLIC 

bringing about a new conflict, which was averted, 
thanks to the good offices of St. Petersburg and 
of London. 

The place which France had lost in interna- 
tional life has been more than regained. The 
labours of M. Delcasse were of signal value in 
the improvement of French external relations. 
He was a leader in the peace policy of Europe. 
He did not wait until all the powers were com- 
pelled to move by the irresistible behests of the 
conscience of the civilised world. At the time 
of Fashoda, he urged arbitration upon the points 
at issue; and even when this was refused by 
England, he still showed the most conciliatory 
attitude. 

From this policy he never deviated. He was 
foremost in signing treaties of arbitration, and 
in putting an end to Anglo-French contro- 
versies. The settlement of the Newfoundland 
difficulty was due, in a very large measure, to 
his far-sighted and conciliatory spirit. He 
brought Great Britain to make the neutrality of 
the Suez Canal real, while the Egyptian question 
ceased to be a constant cause of Anglo-French 
friction. The Republic had already brought 
about the Russian Alliance, but he created the 
Anglo-French entente, followed by the Franco- 
Italian and the Franco-Spanish agreements. 



POLITICAL RECONSTRUCTION 29 

equally commendable. An enumeration of his 
successful diplomatic acts with almost all the 
other powers would be as flattering to the great 
minister as it would be fatiguing to the reader. 
He did not plan the isolation of Germany in 
Europe; "he worked against no one." He pre- 
pared the pacific solution of the Moroccan prob- 
lem, which cost him his portfolio, as the Rouvier 
Cabinet sacrificed him to placate Germany. If 
the Kaiser endeavoured to prevent the carry- 
ing out of the Delcassean plans, the powers, at 
Algeciras, gave a virtual sanction to them. In 
any case, there could not have been a more 
flattering manifestation of the good-will of all 
but two of the powers than that which was 
given at that conference. They were all aware 
that there is a radical difference between the 
ideals of humanitarian solidarity of the Republic 
and the racial exclusivism of the German Em- 
pire. 

Since that time M. Pichon has only continued 
the policy of M. Delcasse. He has brought 
about a Russo-Japanese reconciliation, reached 
a new understanding with Spain in reference 
to the Mediterranean and North Africa, made 
an agreement with Japan shielding French 
Asiatic possessions, contributed to the better 
relations of Russia and England, and, on Feb- 



30 FRANCE UNDER THE REPUBLIC 

ruary 9, 1909, signed an important agreement 
in reference to Morocco with Germany. In 
dealing with world-problems, France took a 
most active part at the Conference of Brussels, 
in 1874, at that of Berlin in 1885, and at those 
of The Hague in 1899 and in 1907. She in- 
augurated the era of international congresses, 
as essential parts of expositions, at her World's 
Fair in 1889, and has been largely represented 
in those which have taken place on such oc- 
casions elsewhere. International congresses, 
upon all great issues of our times, have not only 
been instruments of international friendliness 
and peace, but they have been a great educa- 
tive force, bringing into French life the experi- 
ence of man from all parts of the world. The 
influence of these gatherings has been intensi- 
fied by the many international societies^ which 
the larger life of the Republic has fostered. 
Never have French diplomatic relations been 
more satisfactory or French life more in touch 
with all great human interests beyond national 
borders than during the last forty-six years. 

* Fifteen of them have their headquarters in France. 



CHAPTER II 

THE TRANSFORMATION AND EXPAN- 
SION OF FRANCE 

REPUBLICAN France has also made great 
sacrifices to improve her capacity fcfr 
resistance and her power of expansion. 
The army, which was disorganised, not to say 
demorahsed, by the misfortunes of the Franco- 
Prussian War, has been remodelled. Whatever 
may be the present limitations of French of- 
ficers, there is an essential difference between 
them and those of the Empire. An oflScer of 
the staff of General Felix Douai asked at Miil- 
hausen, in 1870, if the Hartz was broad and 
had a bridge over it, taking that forest for a 
river; and General Michel telegraphed the Min- 
ister of War to ascertain where his own troops 
were.^ The oflScers of to-day have worked 
much, and from a technical point of view are 
superior to all their predecessors. Taken all 
and all, the same thing must be said of their 
manUness and devotion to their country. The 
campaign in Morocco and the present war have 

* Scheurer-Kestner, Souvenirs de jeunesse, p. 160. 
31 



32 FRANCE UNDER THE REPUBLIC 

abundantly demonstrated their heroic spirit. 
The corruption revealed at the time of the 
Dreyfus case was connected with the Bureau 
of Military Information, in which a man to ex- 
cel is tempted to trample under foot the moral 
principles everywhere upheld by true men. 
The army is now like the nation. It is no longer 
made up of the poor, the ignorant, or paid sub- 
stitutes. The marchands d'hommes, who made 
it their business to provide some one to take 
the place of the rich, disappeared with the 
Empire. The son of a peasant and the son of 
a duke now stand side by side in the ranks. 
There wealth and birth no longer create much 
inequality, though the officers come mostly from 
aristocratic families; but the middle class is 
more and more taking an important place 
among them. 

The term of military service has been reduced 
from seven years to two years.^ The peace 
footing of the army has risen from 400,000 to 
571,000, and the war contingent from 540,000 
to 4,350,000,^ but France never led, she only 
followed, Germany in her increase of men and 
of armament. As Captain Lebaud has said: 
"The conception of the army has changed. It 
is no longer intended for the purpose of con- 

* It was restored to three years in 1914. ^ Ramlbiaud, op. cit, p. 569. 



TRANSFORMATION OF FRANCE 33 

quering new territories, but to safeguard the 
national honour. The soldier to-day is a free 
and conscious citizen who is entitled to some 
consideration."^ The army is fast becoming 
something more than a fighting machine. The 
officer is more than a commander, he is rapidly 
becoming an educator. In many places he has 
opened schools which have been quite success- 
ful. In the opinion of Captain Lebaud, the 
residence in barracks should build up manhood 
rather than mere technical ability. Good ap- 
pearance should be an index of self-control and 
self-restraint. Hazing has almost disappeared. 
The attacks of French pacificists upon the army 
have contributed much to its transformation. 
There can be no question that it brings French- 
men of diflferent provinces together, introduces 
a common national spirit among men who have 
never been assimilated,^ leads them to speak the 
national vernacular of which they have been 
ignorant, while it imparts to them a discipline 
which, later on, may be obtained outside of the 
army. In Madagascar it has become a great 
force of colonial pioneering and of instruction 
in the arts of peace. The soldiers have been 
made overseers, gardeners, farmers, road build- 

^ V Education dans Varmee d'une dimocratie, p. 55. 

^ This is the case with the Basques, the Bretons, and the Flemish. 



34 FRANCE UNDER THE REPUBLIC 

ers, engineers, etc.^ The same thing was true 
of the recent campaign in Morocco. They 
built roads, constructed bridges, opened mar- 
kets, estabhshed a postal and telegraph service, 
dispensaries, etc.^ Many of the leaders became 
explorers, such as Gallieni, Gentil, Mizon, 
Binger, Toutee, and Lamy. One cannot but 
gratefully record what French troops have done 
under the Republic to deliver Africa from the 
black Caligulas, Samory, Behanzin, and Rabat, 
whose records of cruelty surpass the darkest 
deeds which the most sanguinary imagination 
could picture. It would be an act of signal in- 
justice not to mention the great services ren- 
dered everywhere to science by French oflScers. 
The navy, in 1870, stood second only to that 
of Great Britain; now it ranks fourth or fifth. 
This shows the non-belligerent intentions of the 
country whose finances would have enabled her 
to build many more naval units if she had 
wished. However, the quality of her seamen 
has been vastly improved. That the British 
should have an admirable navy is quite natural. 
The whole British people have an irresistible 
love of the sea and of ocean travel. They are 
the nomads of the deep. The French are much 
more attached to the soil. With the exception 

^ Gallieni, La 'pacification de Madagascar, 1900. 
2 Le Sihcle, Jan. 23, 1909. 



TRANSFORMATION OF FRANCE 35 

of those living along the coasts, they have none 
of the instincts of a maritime people. To de- 
velop qualities of seamanship the government 
has given extensive bounties to fishermen, most 
of whom, in time of war, would be available for 
service in the navy. The existence of a large 
fleet cultivates the habit of life on the ocean 
which not infrequently becomes love of the sea. 
In this respect there has been a change in the 
feelings of Frenchmen. Nothing is more inter- 
esting than the poetic effusions of Richepin, a 
man who had stood before the mast, upon the 
beauties of the ocean and the glories of the deep. 
This modification of the French attitude to- 
ward seafaring life is a factor of no little mo- 
ment in reckoning the naval strength of France. 
We might apply to the navy the remarks made 
about the army, that, apart from the sense of 
security which it gives to the nation, it exerts 
considerable influence upon the populations 
coming into touch with it, and remains a neces- 
sity so long as the French flag floats over so 
many lands and all the great nations keep up 
their burdensome naval armaments. 

The colonies and protectorates of France, 
leaving out Morocco, have increased eight times 
in extent. During the Republic has come the 
idea of a greater France through her union with 
her most important colonies. Like Russia she 



36 FRANCE UNDER THE REPUBLIC 

has her most promising colonies at her door. 
One by one African possessions have been added 
by arrangements with the powers until the 
French flag flies over territories extending from 
the British Channel across the Mediterranean 
to the Congo River. These acquisitions and 
groupings have been carried on with a continu- 
ity of purpose which is truly admirable. There 
is a scheme to unite more efHciently these pos- 
sessions by a railroad extending from Algiers 
to Lake Tchad. Railroads have been built in 
Dahomey, Senegal, Algeria, and Tunis. Though 
this last province has been less than thirty years 
under French rule, it possesses as many kilo- 
metres of railroad in proportion to its popula- 
tion as France itself. The projected railroads, 
those in process of construction and those in 
running order, for the province are 1,265 miles 
long.^ The Trans-Soudanais, uniting Senegal 
and the Niger Valley, will, when completed, 
have a length of 1,674 miles; an important part 
of it is already finished and prosperous.^ The 
Guinea Railroad was finished to the 248th 
mile, August 30, 1909.^ The great and most 
difficult railroad from the eastern coast of Ma- 
dagascar to the heights of Antananarivo is com- 
pleted from the ocean to the former capital of 

> Vllludration, April 16, 1910. « Le Temps, Sept. 3, 1909. 

» Ibid., Sept. 21, 1909. 



TRANSFORMATION OF FRANCE 37 

the island. Timbuctoo, the city which had 
remained so long an agglomeration of men the 
farthest removed from all possible western in- 
fluence, is a well-governed French possession. 
Caravans now go from there without diflSculty 
to the most northerly points of Africa. A great 
work of the French has been the digging of 
thousands of artesian wells which bring fertility 
as soon as they are dug, while much has been 
done otherwise for irrigation. 

The capital invested in French colonies is not 
far from one billion dollars, while the colonial 
trade has developed rapidly. This is not the 
case with such colonies as St. Pierre and Mique- 
lon, Guadeloupe, Martinique, and Reunion, but 
with those which came under the French flag 
during the second half of the nineteenth century 
which are quite prosperous.^ Furthermore, the 

1 COMPARATIVE TRADE OF THESE COLONIES 





1894 


1911 


Algeria 

Tunis 


$109,770,000 
15,771,000 
9,030,800 
2,028,000 
1,538,800 
4,149,200 
2.119,600 
2,133,800 
34,197,600 
3,017,000 


$232,026,000 

53,068,800 

25,625,200 

7,589,600 

7,762,000 

8,326,400 

9,407,800 

18,459,800 

98,857,800 

5,650,800 


Senegal 

Guinea 


Ivory Coast ... . ... 


Dahomey 


Congo . 


Madagascar 


Indo-China . . 


New Caledonia 





Annuaire statiatique, 1913. 



S8 FRANCE UNDER THE REPUBLIC 

colonial finances have been so administered that 
many of them have a surplus in their budgets. 
To defend these possessions a colonial army 
has been created. Many natives have been in- 
corporated in it, and their education has not 
been neglected. In Algeria were created Me- 
dersas, or training schools for the Islamitic 
clergy who thereby became more intelligent 
and more liberal. Schools were opened also by 
Jules Ferry with the thought of educating the 
natives to render them capable of fully enjoying 
the rights of citizenship. If these people at 
times have been molested, as a rule the govern- 
ment has protected them against the greed of 
European settlers — French as well as others. 
M. Etienne said in Parliament, some years ago, 
that in Algeria, after so many years of French 
occupation, the natives still held twelve-thir- 
teenths of the land, which they are fast improv- 
ing. Following the methods of their conquerors, 
their farming has been modified so that where 
they reaped only four bushels of wheat, now 
the yield is nine.^ Agriculture has become 
diversified. Large vineyards have been estab- 
lished, olive-tree plantations have been made 
on a large scale, the gathering of cork has as- 
sumed some importance, and truck farms send 

1 L& Temps, June 1, 1909. 



TRANSFORMATION OF FRANCE 39 

their early vegetables to Europe. The exports 
from Algeria and Tunis to France amounted to 
$76,491,400 in 1911. All the great instruments 
of civilisation have been introduced. Mr. 
James F. J. Archibald, the war correspondent, 
speaks of "the truly marvellous work the 
French government has done in Algeria in the 
past sixty years, and in Tunis during the last 
tv/enty years. "^ Those who are acquainted 
with the colonial history of the world and of 
black France will be pleased to hear the same 
gentleman say: "Not until I visited the French 
colonies of northern Africa did I find what I 
considered a most perfect form of colonisation, 
and I now firmly believe that the French peo- 
ple and the French government are to-day the 
most practical colonisers of the civilised world." 
The experiences in the colonies have reacted 
upon the education of the mother country. The 
general abstract conception of man has been 
modified by coming in contact with other races. 
A colonial literature has come into existence de- 
scribing the homes of Frenchmen beyond the 
sea, or the tragedies springing from the contact 
of the colonists with the natives. In 1909 was 
founded La Societe coloniale des artistes frangais, 
devoting itself to colonial themes, showing the 

^ The National Geographical Magazine, March, 1909. 



40 FRANCE tJNDER THE REPUBLIC 

artistic possibilities of new lands under new 
conditions. Legislators have provided abundant 
colonial laws and distinguished legists have co- 
ordinated them. Jt is not without significance 
that there is already a codification of the laws 
in force in Morocco.^ Colonial schools, colonial 
gardens, and colonial experimental stations have 
exerted considerable influence. Le Jardin colo- 
nial has studied the best species of cacao-trees, 
of sugar-canes, of gutta-percha and rubber 
plants for colonies. It has made special studies 
of all forms of colonial produce, thereby in- 
cidentally rendering services to botany. An 
institute of colonial medicine studies all the dis- 
eases of foreign possessions. There is scarcely 
a science that has not had new possibilities 
opened with the creation of new colonies and 
that has not rendered services to them. Socie- 
ties, such as the Union coloniale, La Colonisa- 
tion frangaise. La Mutualite coloniaUy and the 
Protestant society of colonisation further the 
colonial cause. An important French associa- 
tion uses every means in its power to promote 
the culture of cotton in Africa. The results 
have been encouraging. The total production, 
which was practically nil a few years ago, 
reached the figures of 360,800 pounds in 1907, 

^ ZrO Science franqaise, 1915, vol. II, p. 329, 



TRANSFORMATION OF FRANCE 41 

376,200 pounds in 1908, and 523,600 pounds in 
1909.^ National industries have adapted them- 
selves to colonial needs and have shown great 
ingenuity in meeting new conditions. Impor- 
tant iron works, bridges, and piers have been 
made for the colonies. There have been con- 
structed machinery for colonial agriculture, 
special means of transportation, contrivances for 
colonial comfort, transportable houses, colonial 
furniture for special districts and climates, new 
adaptations of rubber, gauzes, and clothes for 
use in distant lands. No people has made an 
earlier or better use of automobiles in the colo- 
nies than the French. As they had been great 
road builders, when the day of automobiles 
came these machines had before them uncom- 
mon possibilities. 

Colonial expansion has led intelligent French- 
men to see that the old military methods of de- 
fending national territories, by covering them 
with fortresses, was an anachronism and that 
France could not provide the twelve or fifteen 
thousand miles of frontiers of her vast empire 
with fortifications and men. The conclusions 
concerning the colonies have, right or wrong, 
affected the solutions of problems at home. 

The railroads have also made a great advance. 

1 Le Temps, March, 29, 1910. 



42 FRANCE UNDER THE REPUBLIC 

The old car, separated into inconveniently 
narrow compartments, is being replaced by the 
long car of comfortable dimensions, and on im- 
portant lines one may see vestibule trains. They 
have nearly trebled the extent of their lines, 
their net income has more than doubled, the 
number of travellers quintupled, and the tons 
of merchandise transported have risen fourfold. 
For every mile of national highways there are 
now nearly two, while there have been great 
improvements in the quality of the roads. In 
less than half a century the tonnage of French 
ports has quadrupled.^ The telegraph service 
leaped to figures ten times greater than those at 
the beginning of the Republic, with a total in- 
come four times larger. The same story could be 
told of the telephone of the post-oflSces, whether 
we refer to their service or to their income. 

Notwithstanding the almost irresistible com- 
petition of wheat-growing countries, having the 
advantage of a virgin soil, France still raises 
almost enough wheat for her consumption. 
Her yield is greater year by year. Where she 
formerly reaped 25 bushels, now she has 40. 
Rye and barley are extensively raised. Oats 
have increased 27 per cent. The production 
of fodder has been doubled in twenty years. 

^ Thery, Ed., Les progres economiques de la France, 1909, p. 250, 



TRANSFORMATION OF FRANCE 43 

In different parts of the country has come the 
culture of small fruits, strawberries, raspberries, 
cherries, plums, which are not only distributed 
to the French market but are sent in enormous 
quantities to Great Britain. The larger fruits 
have come to be cultivated more extensively, 
whether used for the table or to make cider and 
yoire. Grape culture has made progress. The 
phylloxera, which years ago destroyed the 
greater part of the vineyards of France and 
inflicted a loss estimated at two billion dollars,^ 
has been practically stamped out. French wine- 
growers have shown great moral strength in 
fighting the evil and replacing the plants de- 
stroyed. The acreage and total product are 
larger than in 1870. The variety of agricul- 
tural and horticultural produce has also in- 
creased. The floral culture of the Riviera has 
led to large exportations of flowers, even to 
America, while great quantities are used for 
the making of perfumes. Some parts of south- 
ern France and Algeria have become the gardens 
of large French centres and of England. French- 
men have never before drawn so much from 
their soil, or made more advantageous uses of 
its produce. 

^ Hanotaux, G., La France, esi-elle en dicadencef Th^ry, Ed., op. 
cit., p. 185. 



44 FRANCE UNDER THE REPUBLIC 

The former superstitions of cattle-raisers, who 
made religious pilgrimages for the cure of their 
herds/ or got priests to bless their flocks before 
starting for distant pastures,^ is slowly, but 
surely, disappearing, giving place to the skill of 
the veterinary surgeon. The farmer no longer 
asks processions like that so beautifully pictured 
by Jules Breton, nor does he go to church to 
have the priest bless the seeds before they are 
intrusted to the ground, but goes rather to 
the agricultural chemist, buys proper fertilisers, 
seeks new markets, studies new demands, and 
strives to supply them. He employs machinery 
upon an unprecedented scale. Not to speak of 
those made at home, almost all forms of Amer- 
ican agricultural implements have been quickly 
introduced. During the summer of 1908, the 
writer, in the valley of the Loire, saw three 
reaping machines following each other in the 
same field; and L' Illustration y soon after, showed 
a procession of five in the same field of wheat. 
Under the Empire all this work was done by 
hand. 

This great change has come from a better 
education and greater agricultural intelligence. 

^ See V Illustration, July 6, 1907, in which there is a picture of Breton 
peasants carrying the tails of their sick cows and placing them upon 
the altar to secure the recovery of those animals. 

3 Ibid., Jan. 8, 1907. 



TRANSFORMATION OF FRANCE 45 

Since Gambetta founded the Ministry of Agri- 
culture, an important part of its functions has 
been agricultural education. This is given in 
its highest form by the National Agronomic In- 
stitute of Paris, by three veterinary schools with 
twenty-seven professors, and by the National 
School of Forestry of Nancy. Then there are 
three secondary schools of agriculture which 
study the peculiar problems of the regions in 
which they are situated, having a staflF of twenty- 
six professors and twenty-nine lecturers. For 
this secondary grade of work there are also the 
School of Agricultural Industries of Douai and 
the National School of Horticulture of Ver- 
sailles. In the lower grade of instruction come 
thirty-four practical elementary schools of agri- 
culture, viticulture, and horticulture; twelve 
schools of irrigation, of draining, of the care and 
uses of milk, of cheese-making, and of the care 
of poultry; nine schools of arboriculture and the 
care of fruit; torty -two fromageries-ecoles, at once 
cheese factories and schools for instruction in 
cheese-making. Every one of the eighty-six de- 
partments into which the country is divided 
has an experimental station. There are forty- 
two agronomic stations and laboratories for 
analyses, six stations of oenology, not to speak 
of the thirteen stations of zoology, of entomol- 



46 FRANCE UNDER THE REPUBLIC 

ogy, of sericulture, of experiments with seeds, 
of vegetal physiology, of vegetal pathology, 
of animal physiology and cattle-feeding, of veg- 
etal physics, of fermentation, and of testing 
machinery. There are also three schools for 
the training of girls for the duties which may 
devolve upon them in farming.^ 

This agricultural transformation has also been 
accelerated by the improvement of roads,^ by 
the greater facilities offered by railroads, by the 
reduction of farmers' taxes,^ and by the en- 
couragements given to agricultural societies. 
The sum placed by the government at the dis- 
posal of 1,500 mutual loan banks^ is now $16,- 
000,000.^ At the Congress of Angers, July, 
1907, M. de Rocquigny showed that agricul- 
tural associations, though of recent date, had 
reached the number of 3,553. In 1912 Charles 
Gide sets them at about 30,000.^ Against cattle 
mortahty there were 7,000 local mutual insur- 



* Annuaire statistique, 1913; Annuaire de la jeunesse, 1907. 

' On April 10, 1879, there were voted at one meeting of the Parlia- 
ment $40,000,000 for the roads of the comitry. (Rambaud, Julea 
Ferry, p. 184.) 

3 In 1879, 1890, 1898, and 1905, important reductions of taxes were 
made. In the budget for 1898, they amounted to $5,200,000. (Ram- 
baud, Histoire de la civilisation contemporaine en France, p. 749.) 

« Meline, J., The Return to the Land, New York, 1907. p. 94. 

* Compte-rendu du sixikme congrbs national des syndicats agricolea. 
(Foi et vie, Dec. 1, 1907.) 

* Economie sociale, p. 538. 



TRANSFORMATION OF FRANCE 47 

ance societies with 355,000 members, as well as 
1,000 mutual insurance societies against fire. 

Co-operative associations have rejuvenated 
the farming of some districts by introducing 
new forms of produce for the Paris markets, by 
developing the export of horticultural crops, 
and by using refrigerator cars to facilitate the 
transportation of perishables, meats and vege- 
tables alike. These organisations have also paid 
some attention to the well-being of the rural 
population, the improvement of dwelling-houses 
for farmers, and to old-age pensions for aged 
toilers.^ 

Such have been the improvements of farming 
life that an ever larger class turns to agriculture, 
and the number of small land-owners is increas- 
ing. According to M. Ruau, Minister of Agri- 
culture, there have been, during the last twenty 
years, only two out of eighty-six departments 
in which concentration of property has taken 
place. The new education and the new life 
have taken traditional French agriculture out 
of the old ruts, and showed it a world of new 
possibilities which have been realised. It might 
be added that the government has recognised 
agriculture by a special decoration known as the 
merite agricole, although this may possibly be 

^ Comj^te-Tendu du iixieme congrh national des syndicate agricoles. 



48 FRANCE UNDER THE REPUBLIC 

brought into disrepute by being distributed too 
freely. 

The industries of the country have been 
quickened by science. Thus, the abiUty to trans- 
mit electric energy to great distances has almost 
created a revolution. There has been a great 
rush in seizing and utilising all the waterfalls. 
The west side of the Alps alone can furnish 
4,000,000 horse-power, and the Pyrenees, the 
Vosges, the Cevennes, and the central moun- 
tains may yield 5,000,000 more. This new 
power,^ now called houille blanche, "white coal," 
is more and more constituting a natural equiv- 
alent for the cheap coal which English com- 
petitors enjoy. 

Again, the country, as compared with others, 
has a pecuHar distribution of industrial inter- 
ests. The salaried workmen are only 5 per 
cent more numerous than the employers or 
those who work on their own account. The 
19,652,000 persons connected with French in- 
dustries, in the largest sense of the term, are 
divided into two almost equal parts. 8,996,000 
are either employers or those who work on their 
own account, while the employees number 



^ To produce this power by a triple-expansion engine it would take 
30,000,000 tons a year of the best anthracite coal and with a double- 
expansion engine 39,000,000 tons. (President C. W. Chamberlain.) 



TRANSFORMATION OF FRANCE 49 

10,655,000.^ In spite of opposite tendencies 
elsewhere, in France this economic individual- 
ism is growing.^ The advantage of such a con- 
dition is that it is a spur to individual ambition, 
that it is more favourable to the all-round de- 
velopment of the labourer, that it secures a 
wider distribution of profits, and that it makes 
for greater social and political stability. The 
disadvantages are that French manufacturers 
find it hard to compete with the colossal or- 
ganisations of the United States, of England, of 
Germany, and that accordingly progress is not 
so striking; yet it has been important.^ 

It is diflScult for foreigners to realise the part 
which machinery has come to play in France. 
Many who in former days spent much time in 
devising new toys, now toil to invent new ma- 
chines adapted to national needs. Visiting the 
mechanical part of the Paris Exposition of 1900 

* Guyot, Yves, " Le coUectivisme futur et le socialisme present," Jour^ 
nal des Economistes, July, 1906, p. 8. 

2 There were 592,600 industrial establishments in 1896 and 616,100 
in 1906, a gain of 23,500 in ten years. (Guyot, Yves, ibid.) 

• One of the great auxiliaries of manufacturing, coal, was extracted to 
the amount of 13,000,000 tons in 1870 and 38,500,000 in 1911. In the 
meantime the production of pig-iron increased 147 per cent, iron and 
steel 130 per cent, and the mining of iron-ore 517 per cent. The 
number of steam-engines rose from 27,088, with 336,000 horse-power, to 
81,620, with 3,141,000 horse-power; a gain of 201 per cent for the en- 
gines and of 834 per cent for their potential capacity. From 1878 to 
1911 the number of horse-power used in metallurgic industries rose from 
102,000 to 559,000, and in textile manufacturing from 91,000 to 544,000. 
{Annuaire statistique, 1913.) 



50 FRANCE UNDER THE REPUBLIC 

with Americans, the writer heard them again 
and again express their astonishment at the 
advance of the French in mechanical art. 
The greater activity of inventors is seen in the 
great increase of patents, trade marks, and de- 
posited designs and models.^ Though the prin- 
ciple of industrial agglomeration is not so widely 
spread as in the United States, France has her 
Fall River in Roubaix, her Pittsburg at Le 
Creusot, and numerous other centres where ma- 
chinery is made and used upon a large scale. 
Some of the great metallurgic firms export ma- 
chinery to every part of the world. One of 
them makes sixty tons of pig-iron in an hour. 
Provence has the largest and the best deposits 
in the world of bauxite^ — so essential in the 
making of aluminum. 

The ability to erect vast iron structures is not 
the sole possession of Germans, Englishmen, and 
Americans. The Eiffel Tower, the Suspension 
Bridge Gisclard in the Pyrenees orientates, the 
Viaduct of Gabarit in the department of Cantal, 



1 


1870 


1911 


Patents 


3,029 

1,175 

21,632 


13,971 
16,805 
53,854 


Trade marks 


Designs and models deposited 



Annuaire statistique, 1913. 
• Mineral for the making of aluminum. 



TRANSFORMATION OF FRANCE 51 

EiffeFs superb iron bridge over the Douro 
River in Portugal, the iron bridge over the Red 
River in Indo-China, immense iron docks in the 
colonies, and the enormous guns made at Le 
Creusot — guns which became so renowned dur- 
ing the two Balkan Wars as well as in the pres- 
ent one — show that French metallurgic works 
are capable of great things undreamed of four 
decades ago. Frenchmen were among the first 
to use electric locomotives on their railroads. 
They have done works of engineering on their 
roads and their canals which amaze foreigners 
by their boldness of conception, their beauty 
of design, or their admirable execution. One 
of the colleagues of the writer, looking at photo- 
graphs of the masonry of the new railroad in 
Madagascar, said: "We Americans have never 
done such superb work on a new railroad." 
Moreover, France was first in making subma- 
rine boats. Her place in aeronautics is such 
that inventors of dirigible balloons and of aero- 
planes have gone to her for experiments and 
recognition. Her supremacy in the making of 
automobiles certainly lasted until the war. 

A Paris house furnished all the apparatus for 
the great light-house of Bombay. England 
buys annually from France over 10,000,000 dol- 
lars' worth of finely wrought metallic works. 



52 FRANCE UNDER THE REPUBLIC 

chiefly copper.^ It is quite significant that 
French firms were asked to provide electric 
lighting for the London Exhibition of 1908.^ 
From 1891 to 1906 the country exported ma- 
chines, metalKc objects, tools, small sea craft, 
automobiles, etc., so that the excess of exporta- 
tions over importations increased from $23,400,- 
000 to $94,600,000.^ French jewelry wrought 
with great artistic perfection is more and more 
iappreciated in all the great centres of the civil- 
ised world. Works in gold, hall-marked by the 
government, increased 51 per cent from 1894 
to 1906, those in silver 24 per cent. The ex- 
ports of these increased 80 per cent for gold and 
186 per cent for silver.* M. d'Avenel speaks 
of a French manufacturer who makes more 
than one hundred and fifty tons of paper in a 
day. 

Textile industries have undergone transfor- 
mations of great importance. The hand-weav- 
ing of the Empire has largely been replaced by 
the power-loom. The hand-loom is used only 
for the weaving of samples or for very small 
orders which are more easily worked that way. 
In some places the power-loom, worked by elec- 
tricity, is in the home of the weaver. The 

1 Berard, op. ciL, p. 58. » le Sieck, Nov. 19, 1907. 

• Thery, op. cit., p. 23. * Annuaire statistique. 



TRANSFORMATION OF FRANCE 53 

cheap distribution of electric energy is now 
keeping the workmen at home. In small cities, 
and often in small villages, the baker makes his 
bread with electric kneading machines. The 
transformation of weaving by machine has not 
lowered the quality of the output; in fact the 
finest textile fabrics are so exquisite as to come 
nearer the decorative arts than to simple tex- 
ture. France takes an ever larger part in the 
cutting of diamonds. The jewellers of Birming- 
ham buy them in large quantities, and then sell 
them to the Anglo-Saxons all over the world. ^ 
The crystals of Baccarat, the beautiful plates 
of Saint Gobain, and the china of Limoges have 
never enjoyed a greater popularity at home and 
abroad. The article du Jura and the article do 
Paris are ever in greater demand. 

The artistic traditions and environments, high 
ideals of professional workmanship, and the 
specific educational efforts of the Republic have 
kept up the old superiority. The few technical 
schools existing under the Empire have been 
remodelled and many new ones have been 
founded. The Conservatoire national des arts 
et metiers (National Conservatory of Arts and 
Crafts), at once a laboratory of mechanical, 
physical, and chemical experiments, a patent 

* Berard, V., La France et Guillaume II, p. 42. 



54 FRANCE UNDER THE REPUBLIC 

office with a vast collection of models of in- 
ventors, and a museum of devices to prevent 
industrial accidents and improve industrial 
hygiene, has been made a great school of tech- 
nology. In 1912 it had 2,205 students.^ There 
is also the Ecole centrale des arts et manufac- 
tures (Central School of Arts and Manufactures), 
preparing engineers for all forms of industry as 
well as for public works, with 727 students.^ 
Then come five national schools of arts and 
crafts, at Aix, Angers, Chalons, Cluny, and Lille, 
with 1,535 students.^ A school of this kind was 
also opened in Paris. 

The purpose of these institutions is to train 
and improve overseers and manufacturers, keep- 
ing in view the character of the manufactures 
peculiar to the part of the country in which the 
school is situated. Thus the institution in Lille 
has a section devoted to spinning and weaving, 
while that of Paris has one giving special at- 
tention to electricity, industrial chemistry, and 
automobilism. There is the institution already 
referred to, the ''National Practical School of 
Workmen and Overseers" of Chauny, and the 
schools of clock and watch making (horlogerie) 
in the eastern part of France to improve the per- 

* Annuaire statistique, 1913. * Ibid, 1913. 

3 Ihid, 1913. 



TRANSFORMATION OF FRANCE 55 

sonnel in this branch of industry. In Armen- 
tieres, Nantes, Vierzon and Voiron the national 
professional schools train workingmen for the 
position of overseers and managers in large es- 
tabhshments. Other industrial schools give 
various forms of industrial education. One of 
them, the Ecole du livre, teaches its students the 
best way to print a book, to illustrate it, and 
to bind it. This institution will bring the 
French book to a still higher place in the world. 
Seventy schools, fifty -seven for young men and 
thirteen for young women, are at once giving 
an industrial education, and teaching the best 
methods for disposing of the fruits of industry; 
they are called "Schools of Commerce and In- 
dustry." In 1912 they had 13,954 students.^ 

The several great exhibitions in Paris, as well 
as those in the provinces, have also been eflScient 
agents of industrial progress. This has been 
increased by the many-sided development of 
energy in other realms of the nation's life, as 
well as by a wider culture and a keener intelli- 
gence. Frenchmen are now conscious of their 
peculiar place in the economic life of the world. 
They recognise that their products are not so 
much for the masses as for the classes, though 
they work for both. They realise that their 

^ Annuaire statistique, 1913, 



56 FRANCE UNDER THE REPUBLIC 

well-being in a large measure depends upon the 
prosperity and richness of mankind which are 
developed by peace. Hence industrial and com- 
mercial considerations, independently of many 
others, make Frenchmen opposed to war. 



CHAPTER III 

THE DEVELOPMENT OF COMMERCE 
AND WEALTH 

FRENCH commerce has above all become 
better organised. Under the Empire, the 
chambers of commerce were merely con- 
sultative, local advisory boards, hampered at 
every point by the government; but now they 
are unhindered and, what is more, they have 
become extremely numerous. Many have been 
founded in foreign countries, where they serve 
French interests. The government now co- 
operates with them, and has enlarged the State 
machinery to further the development of trade. 
In 1882 was established the Superior Council of 
Commerce, a board of commercial advisers with 
a large experience to help the same cause. In 
1897 was organised in the Ministry of Commerce 
the National Foreign Trade Office, the design of 
which is to furnish merchants with all the data 
which they wish in regard to the opportunities 
of trade in any foreign country. Its work is 

57 



58 FRANCE UNDER THE REPUBLIC 

done by interviews, or by means of the Moniteur 
officiel du commerce. 

In 1898 was instituted the organisation of 
Counsellors of Foreign Trade, which numbers 
now 1,400. These counsellors are Frenchmen 
established in other lands, who send valuable 
information to the home office. They also find 
positions for young Frenchmen in those coun- 
tries, with the view of acquainting them with 
commercial conditions and methods. There 
were likewise created foreign commercial schol- 
arships, devoted entirely to students preparing 
for industrial or commercial pursuits. The gov- 
ernment has gone even further in creating the 
institution of attaches commerciaux in connection 
with embassies and legations. These attaches 
may prove a sign of the times, giving more place 
to trade questions than to military ones. Socie- 
ties of commercial geography were organised in 
Paris, Marseilles, Bordeaux, Lyons, Lille, and 
Nancy.^ 

Commercial schools have been multiplied, 
rendered more practical and less academic. 
Superior schools of commerce were developed 
or established in twelve of the most important 
cities of the country outside of the capital. The 
Commercial Institute of Paris, founded in 1884, 

^ Ilambaud, Histoire de la civilisation contemporaine en France, p. 648. 



COMMERCE AND WEALTH 59 

is largely devoted to the preparation of young 
men for foreign trade. The School of High 
Commercial Studies, with an annual budget of 
$80,000, is one of the best commercial institu- 
tions anywhere. The great extension of the 
study of political economy has aided the gen- 
eral apprehension of financial problems. Fur- 
thermore, the Republic has had the co-operation 
of remarkable financiers like Leon Say and 
Paul Leroy-Beaulieu,^ who have done no little 
to call the attention of French democracy to its 
wasteful methods; and eminent economists who 
have done a great work of popular financial 
education. The press also contributed to the 
good results already pointed out. Of the 61 
papers representing commerce, 39 were founded 
under the Republic, and of the 270 journal- 
istic organs of finance, 177 were started since 
1871.2 

All these efforts must tell. A greater general 
intelhgence, and a better professional training 
have done much toward the commercial and 
financial advance visible in so many directions. 
In gauging this gain we should remember that 
the French have not the advantage of Amer- 
icans, with a new country of unlimited resources, 

^ La Science f rang aise, vol. II, p. 396. 

* Annuaire de la yresse, 1909, pp. 844 and 852. 



60 FRANCE UNDER THE REPUBLIC 

and with methods which set aside all consider- 
ations of the future, who make a havoc of 
forests, exhaust arable lands, and pick here and 
there the best from their best mines. In France 
the forests are in a condition of steady improve- 
ment. Under the Republic they have increased 
to the extent of 1,150,000 acres.^ The soil is 
rendered more and more fertile, while mines are 
worked with a care demanded by their relative 
poverty. France, so rich in many things, has 
certainly not been favoured in the matter of 
mines.^ 

Notwithstanding this the annual commerce 
has steadily increased and has more than doubled 
from 1869 to 1911. It is true that the Clearing- 
House was introduced after the foundation of 
the Republic, but its transactions have increased 
sixteen times from the first quinquennial reports. 
The Bank of France, which has been the bul- 
wark of French finances, been a vast clearing- 
house for the country, done without compensa- 
tion all the banking of the government, made 
free grants and important loans to the State, the 
bank, and the only bank, of emission for the 
whole country, is perhaps the best index possi- 

1 nilustmtion, Oct. 13, 1906. 

2 This must be qualified with the statement that the iron mines of Lor- 
raine are revealing a greater richness and that North Africa has un- 
usually large deposits of iron and phosphates. 




JULES GREVY 



COIVIMERCE AND WEALTH 



61 



ble of the nation's prosperity.^ No institution 
of the kind has shown more foresight in preparing 
for the future or a wiser financial conservatism. 
It secured proportionally the greatest gold re- 
serve of any such institution in the world. It 
has been sufficiently broad-minded to relieve 
other foreign institutions in times of need. Its 
rates of interest have, as a whole, been lower 
than those of other European banks. They 
were 5.71 per cent immediately after the War 
of 1870, descended to a point as low as 2 per 
cent in 1895, and were 3 per cent in 1911.^ 

Apart from this great financial institution, 
in many respects enjoying monopolies, there are 
five great banking institutions, not to speak of 
small banks, the Credit lyonnais, the Societe 
generale, the Comptoir national d'escompte, the 
Credit industriel et commercial, and the Societe 



FINANCIAL PROGRESS OF THE BANK OF FRANCE. IN 
MILLIONS OF DOLLARS 





1869 


1911 


Notes discounted 


1.326 

114 

5,800 

238 

270 

12,500 

69 

8,680 


3,320 

240 

13,680 

1,480 

1,048 

58,800 

107 

54,300 


Average of unpaid notes 


Cash and note transactions 

Average gold reserve 


Rfl.nlc-notps ifi rimilfliinTi . . , . , 


Deposits and payments 


Average balance 


Deposit transfers 





' Annuaire statistique, 1913. 



62 FRANCE UNDER THE REPUBLIC 

marseillaise, large joint-stock corporations which 
receive deposits and make loans. By ingenious 
and plausible reasoning, M. Thery, editor of 
L'economiste Europeen, in his admirable book, 
Les progres economiques de la France, estimated 
that their total transactions must have been 
$2,894,000,000 in 1891 and $6,872,400,000 in 
1907.^ In fifteen years the funds intrusted to 
the Bank of France increased 61 per cent and 
the other institutions 177 per cent.^ The annual 
income from national and foreign securities 
averaged $327,099,000 during the period from 
1884 to 1891, and from 1900 to 1907 it was 
$427,376,000.^ The same writer infers that in 
twenty-five years a capital of $2,278,000,000 
has been added to these investments. 

During the American panic of 1907 French 
industries were severely tried, but banking in- 
stitutions were scarcely affected. The Bank of 
France did not hesitate then to help the Bank of 
England. Those who, like the writer, remem- 
ber the heroic efforts of M. Thiers, after the 
war, to borrow money for the Republic at im- 
possible rates, cannot but marvel on seeing that 
the once vanquished, isolated, mistrusted France 
had before the present war become, in some 
respects, the banker of the world. French citi- 

iP. 287. »P. 289. »P. 298. 



COMMERCE AND WEALTH 63 

zens own a large amount of Russian, Turkish, 
Portuguese, and Spanish bonds apart from im- 
portant investments in foreign stocks.^ 

In 1907 M. Thery sets at seven and a quarter 
biUion dollars French investments abroad.^ A 
year later M. Alfred Neymarck, a most eminent 
economist, long president of the Societe de statis- 
tique, valued them at six billion dollars.^ Aver- 
aging these two estimates, what progress is here 
evident as compared with two billions and a 
quarter during the last days of the Second Em- 
pire!^ That is a gain of nearly five billion dollars 
in less than two score years of republican 
regime.^ Let us add that French traits of fore- 
sight and prudence show themselves at this 
point; their investments are mostly in bonds 
or national rentes, while Englishmen give prom- 
inence to stocks,^ This makes French finances 
more stable than those of most other countries. 
Be that as it may, before the war France re- 
ceived annually from foreign securities $400,- 
000,000 of interest, and that in gold. Further- 
more, this made rates of foreign exchange 
most favourable to the country receiving the 
funds. 

^ Delpech and Lamy, Trente ans de rSpublique, 1902, p. 57. 

2 Op. cit, p. 306. 3 Guyot, Yves, Le Sihcle, Dec. 8, 1908. 

* Thery, p. 304. s jf^id,^ p. 306. 

« Guyot, Yves, Le Sibcle, Oct. 13, 1908. 



64 FRANCE UNDER THE REPUBLIC 

From 1892 to December 31, 1907, the stock of 
gold in France increased by $785,800,000. Of 
this $411,800,000 were coined into Frenqh 
money, $224,000,000 were taken by the jewelry 
trade, and about $148,000,000 in various forms 
and in various ways have been deposited in in- 
stitutions.^ This, according to the same writer, 
means, at least, that when France has paid all 
foreign countries for what she draws from them 
in return for what she sends to them, i. e,, after 
paying all that needs to be paid, she has re- 
ceived $785,800,000 in gold, nearly one-fifth of 
the total production the world over during that 
time.^ The wealth of the country, in stocks and 
securities of all kinds, which was half a billion 
dollars in 1851, five billion dollars in 1880, 
nearly twenty-two billions in 1900/ was valued 
at twenty-seven billions in 1906.^ 

It is difficult to gauge accurately the nation's 
wealth, but innumerable data, singly or collec- 
tively, point to a great increase. The gain may 
be seen in the great advance which has taken 
place in the securities of the six great railroad 
companies of France, almost entirely owned by 
Frenchmen, as they are all guaranteed by the 

^ Thery, op. ciL, p. 346. 

2 Ibid. 

' Avenel, Georges d'. Revue des Deux Mondes, June 1, 1906, p. 651. 

* Guyot, Yves, Le SUcle, Oct. 13, 1908. 



COMMERCE AND WEALTH 



65 



State.* The reason of this remarkable rise is 
the increased prosperity, and an ever-growing 
larger use of the national network of railroads. 
In sixteen years, from 1891 to 1907, their gross 
earnings were $100,160,000.^ The same thing 
might be said of the. other popular channels of 
French investments outside of national bonds. 
Legacies have risen from $913,400,000 in 1869 
to $1,387,800,000 in 1907. During the period 
elapsing from 1884 to 1891 the average estate 
was $1,!276, and from 1899 to 1906 it reached 
$1,461.^ Gauged by the assessors' lists, which 
are always below the real valuation, the national 
wealth has quadrupled in seventy-five years. 
It was $27,200,000,000 in 1869 and $40,800,000,- 
000 in 1904. As a matter of fact, as the Comte 
Georges d'Avenel puts it, it is about $46,800,- 
000,000. It has increased one-half under the 



' ADVANCE IN RAILROAD SECURITIES 






STOCKS 


BONDS 


1871 


1911 


1871 


1911 


Est 


95 
170 

122 
153 
163 
101 


178 
235 
209 
316 

248 
185 


57 
59 
58 
61 
59 
58 


96 
83 
83 
84 
83 
84 


Paris-Lyon-Mediterranee 

Midi 


Nord 


Orleans 


Quest 





Annuaire statistique, 1913. 
«Tb6ry, op. cit., p. 225. 



» Jind., p. 824. 



66 FRANCE UNDER THE REPUBLIC 

Republic.^ M. Thery reaches nearly the same 
conclusion after basing his calculations upon the 
increased valu-es of legacies.^ Unfortunately we 
know only too well that assessors in every coun- 
try fail to see all taxable property, and that in 
view of the inheritance tax heirs often come 
short of making an accurate report of the real 
wealth inherited. 

With the progress of wealth has also come a 
better distribution of it than in most countries. 
The real estate is in the hands of 8,454,000 
owners. There are not five persons in France 
owning 25,000 acres of land, while in Hungarj^ 
there are more than 200. One could not find 
one man in France with an income of $150,000 
from land, while in Great Britain there are at 
least 175.^ We have shown that farming prop- 
erty is more and more widely distributed, and, 
as the friends of large estates put it, it is in- 
creasingly morcelee (parcelled). In the Journal 
des Economistes^ Yves Guyot asserts that there 
are more than nine persons in ten who are di- 
rectly or indirectly owners of real estate. In 
his paper, already referred to, Le collectivisme 
futur et le socialisme present, he sets it at twelve- 

^ Revue des Deux Mondes, June 1, 1906, p. 616. 
« Oj). ciL, p. 327. 

* Avenel, Les Frangais de mon tempg, p. 260. 

* July 15, 1906, p. 8. 



COMMERCE AND WEALTH 67 

thirteenths of the population. The same con- 
clusion is forced upon us by the unusually 
wide distribution of inheritances. Those above 
$1,000,000 scarcely exceed 6 per cent of the 
whole. Four-fifths are made up of small and 
moderate amounts. 

The records of savings-banks point to the 
same facts. From 1872 to 1900 the number of 
depositors increased three times, and the amount 
deposited five times.^ From 2,130,000 in 1869,^ 
notwithstanding stringent laws forbidding the 
possession of two bank-books, and bringing 
down the maximum of deposits from $400 to 
$300, in 1911 there were 14,400,000 bank-books. 
The deposits had risen from $142,000,000 to 
$1,125,000,000.^ It must be stated also that, 
while the savings-banks encourage thrift, they 
have rendered a great service to the country by 
putting into circulation large sums which, before 
the Republic, remained unproductive in the "old 
stockings" of the lower classes.^ Furthermore, 
they have taught the people the value of na- 
tional bonds and State-guaranteed securities as 
safe investments. 

According to M. A. Neymarck, the people own 
$4,600,000,000 worth of stocks and bonds of 

* Delpech and Lamy, op. cit., p. 56. ' Annuaire statistique, 1913. 

^Annuaire statistique, 1913. * Thery, op. cit., p. 294. 



68 FRANCE UNDER THE REPUBLIC 

the six great railroad companies of the coun- 
try, and $5,200,000,000 of French Tentes, held 
in small quantities.^ Pierre Leroy-Beaulieu, 
who lost his life in the war, the author of one 
of the ablest books in French on the United 
States,^ said in Parliament that 17,000 out of 
the 31,000 stockholders of the Bank of France 
own only one or two shares.^ The present state 
of national finance is satisfactory, not because 
it has always been guided by superior wisdom 
— though wisdom there has been — but because 
the spirit of thrift and economy has never been 
more cultivated or more potent. It is one of the 
great national virtues. 

The reactionaries may oppose the Republic, 
but they should oppose it fairly, intelligently; 
and this they have not done. In choosing an 
issue, they have often selected the most unfa- 
vourable to them, namely, the financial condition 
of the land. They have circulated fables about 
the ruin of public credit, and more than once 
have endeavoured to start runs upon savings- 
banks. The finances of the Republic are not 
beyond criticism — where is there a democratic 
government above reproach in that respect.'* 
Yet even here we are forced by facts to find 

* V Illustration, Jan. 3, 1905. * Les EtatsrUnis au XX' sibcle. 

* Chambre des deputes, Feb. 16, 1909. 



COMMERCE AND WEALTH 69 

much that is creditable to Repubhcan financial 
administration. The Revue des Deux Mondes, 
all along a stern censor of the Republic, has been 
forced to recognise that it "has mercilessly 
dropped any man whose reputation was soiled 
with financial intriguing either on behalf of 
himself or of his relatives."^ The Repub- 
licans have gone to the very bottom of the 
Panama corruption, and punished the offend- 
ers with a severity from which Americans 
and British in similar instances have always 
shrunk. 

The financial legacies from the past were very 
heavy. Thus the budget for 1910, as first pro- 
posed by the Minister of Finances, amounted 
to $805,400,000; but of that $13,800,000 were 
devoted to pay the pensions of Catholic priests, 
and for squaring accounts as well as estimates. 
The sum of $300,800,000 represented pensions, 
interest, and annuities on the national debt. 
The largeness of this sum came, in a great mea- 
sure, from the Franco-Prussian War, and from 
imperative national work, performed by the 
Republic, which should have been done by 
former governments. Seeing the extent to 
which France was backward as compared with 
other nations, the Republicans attempted to re- 

iNov. 1. 1900, p. 230. 



70 FRANCE UNDER THE REPUBLIC 

gain time by a multitude of works of national 
utility. 

In this budget $252,200,000 were allotted to 
the army, the navy, and the work of colonial 
defence. By the end of the nineteenth century, 
the Republic had spent at least $5,000,000,000 
to reorganise the military and the naval forces 
of the country.^ When all the great powers of 
Europe were enlarging their armaments, France, 
though following afar oflf, could not but act like- 
wise. In no country were those expenses voted 
to such an extent under the sense of a merciless 
national necessity. To the work of education 
were allowed $56,200,000; to curtail this sum 
would have provoked a revolution; $60,800,000 
were devoted to the important postal, tele- 
graphic, and telephonic service — a sum compen- 
sated for by large returns; $49,000,000 went to 
public works — a small sum to keep in good con- 
dition the extensive system of French roads and 
other works of national utility. A sum of 
nearly $75,000,000 was the comparatively small 
amount left for other national services.^ 

The number of functionaries has increased, 
but the state machinery does a national work 
several times larger. The improvements that 

^ Neymarck, A., Trente ans de finances, p. S. 
^ Le Temps, Sept. 8, 1909. , 



COMMERCE AND WEALTH 71 

were made and the new tasks performed de- 
manded a new and a larger civil service.^ Hence 
the increase of public officials for which Repub- 
licans have been so constantly taken to task.^ 
Such being the case, there is nothing abnormal 
either in the swelling of the number of public 
servants from 285,000 in 1873 to 440,000 in 
1906, or in the increment of expense from $68,- 
000,000 to $140,000,000.3 

Taxation has naturally increased at pretty 
nearly the same rate as wealth. In a paper be- 
fore the Societe d'economie politique of Paris M. 
Neymarck has shown that the cost of collecting 
the taxes has diminished while the methods have 

* Some American papers have repeated the criticisms of French Re- 
actionaries about the large number of men in"the civil service, but they 
did this by including army officers and state teachers in their lists, 

2 In a village well known to the writer, a village whose population 
has scarcely varied since 1870, there were then four teachers, and one 
of them was town clerk; now there are twelve, not to speak of two 
secularised nuns in the parochial school. The village has a regular 
town clerk, who is also librarian. Under the Republic an important 
highway service has been created. This demanded the labours of several 
men for repairs. A letter-carrier spent then three or four hours a day 
to distribute a score or two of letters, and once a week a dozen weekly 
papers. Now there is a regular post-office, with a savings department, 
telegraph and telephone wdth three resident women employees, not to 
speak of several letter-carriers who distribute letters and papers in as 
large a quantity as they would in a busy American town of the same 
size. Money-orders, which under the Empire could be sent only from 
the chef-lieu de canton, are very numerous at this office, as there is no 
bank in the community. The telegraph and the telephone do a large 
business, while the savings-bank department has become quite impor- 
tant. The two gardes champetres have scarcely changed their functions. 
This remarkable creation and extension of service entailed a correspond- 
ing increase in the number of employees. 

» Le Siecle, May 30, 1909. 



72 FRANCE UNDER THE REPUBLIC 

grown gentler.^ Again, the budget had to be in- 
creased so as to compensate for services formerly 
paid by the public, but now free. Under the 
Empire a fee was required in most of the com- 
mon schools. Taxes have been removed from 
salt, soap, oils, paper, and hygienic drinks. Let- 
ter postage has been reduced from five to two 
cents. There has been a similar reduction for 
registered letters, money-orders, telegrams, and 
other postal services. Newspapers have bene- 
fited by an even greater diminution of rates. 
Express packages and judiciary formalities have 
been favoured in a similar manner. 

Furthermore, French legislators have dis- 
tributed taxes more equitably. But the ten- 
dency of recent years has been to tax revenue 
with cumulative rates and to proportion the tax 
to the ability to meet it. After considering all 
the extenuating circumstances for congested 
budgets, there is no hiding of the fact that 
SociaHsts have been singularly indifferent to 
sound finance. There is further the depressing 
fact that the national debt is increasing and 
that in 1911 it had reached $7,280,000,000.2 
Parallel with this is the reassuring considera- 
tion that public confidence has grown with the 
debt, as we may see from the gradual decrease 

1 L' Illustration, May 25, 1901. * Annuaire statistique, 1913. 



COMMERCE AND WEALTH 73 

of interest. French rentes, bonds, yielded 5.4 
per cent of interest in 1872, 3.55 in 1890, and 
g.OS' in 1901. In 1871 London bankers were 
willing to advance money to M. Thiers at 6j^ 
per cent.^ In June of the same year, 3-per-cent 
bonds were quoted at 53.8, and on November 
30, 1901, at 101.2 Even during the panic of 
1907 they never fell below 95. 

But why was it that the Republic could bor- 
row money at such low rates when the national 
debt was increasing .^^ Was it because of blind 
patriotic feelings.^ In the first place, the peo- 
ple knew that, when an expense is incurred, the 
budget makes provisions for its payment; that 
much of the national debt was contracted by 
measures of utility which would increase the 
people's wealth and revenue, and that, what- 
ever befalls, the nation always pays its debts. 
This was seen at the beginning of the Republic, 
when some politicians proposed not to honour 
the loan which Gambetta had secured without 
adequate warrant during the war. The mem- 
bers of the Assembly set aside the question of 
legal form, and asked if the funds had been 
used for the country. The affirmative answer 
was at once followed with the order to pay. 

» Taine, ibid., p. 12^4. 

' Neymarck, paper read before the SocUie dCeconomie politique : Trente 
atinSes financihres ; and Annuaire statistique. 



74 FRANCE UNDER THE REPUBLIC 

Before many years the French people will 
come into possession of the greater part of the 
railroads of the country. In case the govern- 
ment wishes to sell them, then the whole would 
more than cancel the national obligations; and 
if it preferred to operate them, they would re- 
main good collateral assets. Again, an impor- 
tant feature of this debt, which makes it distinct 
from that of some European powers, is that it 
is held by Frenchmen. The interest paid does 
not drain the covmtry of so much, but goes to 
multitudes of citizens who thereby feel more 
solicitude for the good order and prosperity of 
the country. The coupons of French rentes are 
static forces on the side of good government. 



CHAPTER IV 

THE NEW EDUCATION IN THE NEW 

LIFE 

IT is in the realm of education that we see 
the greatest and the most abiding changes 
under the RepubHc. People have become 
enthusiastic in this direction. The old, pious 
doctrine of the social utility of ignorance has 
been relegated to the domain of mischievous 
superstitions. Nothing is further from popular 
anxiety than Renan's fear of "the day for hu- 
man society when light has penetrated into all 
its strata."^ After the Franco-Prussian War 
Frenchmen were directed by the thought that 
it was *'the school-teacher who had won at 
Sedan," and that it was by education that 
France could regain her position in the world. 

Led by this conviction, the nation shrank from 
no sacrifice. Beautiful school-houses, spitefully 
called palais scolaires by the Reactionaries, have 
been erected in the villages, lycees and college 
buildings in the cities. At one session, on July 

1 DiscouTs et confirencea, 1887, p. 229. 
75 



76 FRANCE UNDER THE REPUBLIC 

3, 1880, after extensive study of the question, 
the Parhament voted that twenty-seven lycees 
be built. ^ In important centres fine edifices 
have been constructed for higher education. 
Twenty-five thousand school-houses have been 
built or rebuilt, to which were devoted no less 
than $160,000,000.2 Fj^^^q 1875 to 1905 the 
number of primary schools increased from 71,- 
000 to 82,488, the number of teachers from 110,- 
000 to 157,000, and the pupils from 4,716,000 to 
5,654,794.^ In thirty-three years the iUiterate 
have fallen from 18.03 per cent to 4.26 per cent. 
Apart from this there is a vast effort made to 
keep pupils in touch with the schools after they 
leave them. The associations which are formed, 
called petites A,, number 6,476. The school pa- 
tronages, looking also after former pupils, num- 
ber ^,^55. During the year 1908-1909 the num- 
ber of evening schools was 31,637, while 74,869 
persons gave their labours mostly without com- 
pensation.* The day of dirty school-houses and 
of giving children different instruction accord- 
ing to their poverty or wealth is gone.^ There 
is no longer the banc des pauvres and the banc 
des riches, as they existed in some towns. At- 

^ Rambaud, Jules Ferry, p. 166. 

2 Delpech and Lamy, op. ciL, p. 21. ' Annuaire staiistique, 191S. 

* Petit, Edouard, Rapport sur Veducation populaire en 1908-1909. 
' Rambaud, Jules Ferry, p. 144. 



EDUCATION IN THE NEW LIFE 77 

tendance at school has been made compulsory 
and tuition free. 

The Republic recognises the birthright of 
every child to a common education, and every- 
thing is done to help him secure it. If he is pre- 
vented from attending school because he is 
shoeless or because he has inadequate food, the 
town is bound to provide the imperative needs. 
The State more and more compels parents to 
send their children to school, and society to pro- 
vide for their most essential wants. As a good 
many children remained outside of this educa- 
tion because of their mental deficiencies, the 
government provided for the special instruction 
of abnormal and backward pupils. 

The teaching itself, but imperfectly accessible 
to the masses under the Empire, has been raised 
from scant ability to read and write, a little 
arithmetic, history, and the catechism to a 
standard equal to the best in any country. The 
branches taught are morals and civics, reading 
and writing French, elements of French liter- 
ature, geography, history, elementary principles 
of law and of political economy, drawing, model- 
ling, music. ^ An important innovation is that 
of Vart a Vecole,^ or art teaching in common 

^ Vuibert, Annuaire de la jeunesse. 

* An interesting society, Societe nationale de Vart d Vecole, is doing 
much for this valuable training. Its programme is: "Vecole mine. 



78 FRANCE UNDER THE REPUBLIC 

schools, whereby is cultivated the love of beauty 
so especially needed by the masses. The moral 
teaching, which we discuss at length elsewhere,* 
exerts a strong influence upon the population. 
The schools have been made non-sectarian, 
but not godless, as aflSrmed in the denunciatory 
reports of the clergy, for whom a godless school 
is one in which they do not rule. 

This education also has been so decidedly 
differentiated as to adapt it better to the prac- 
tical every-day life of French youth. There 
have been opened schools of apprenticeship, 
normal schools of cutting and fitting for girls, 
and important professional schools.^ There have 
been founded or transformed more than three 
hundred schools of design and decorative art. 
In Paris these schools contribute greatly to the 
superiority of taste and form visible in most of 
the fine goods made in that city. In many places 
the technical character of the schools is de- 
termined by local industries. In Roubaix the 
institution is correlated with weaving, in Aubus- 
son (Creuse) with tapestry, in Limoges with 
ceramics, in Nice with domestic decorations, in 

aMe, rationellement construite et meublee, attrayanie et ornie. For- 
mation du go'At par le decor; initation de F enfant a la beaute des lignes, 
des couleurs, des formes, des mouvements, et des sons." 

^ See Chap. XI. 

2Rambaud, Jules Ferry, p. 160. See also New England Magazine, 
July, 1900, p. 588, "What France does for Education." 



EDUCATION IN THE NEW LIFE 79 

Rennes with sculpture, and in Calais with lace. 
More than 100,000 pupils attend these schools.^ 

The secondary schools have not undergone 
such a profound transformation as the others, 
but, as a whole, they have never been better or 
more numerous. The pupils have increased 
from 129,000 to 195,000.^ The mihtary and the 
monastic spirit, so prominent in them under the 
Empire, has lost much of its power. Twenty 
years ago the proviseur of one of the finest lycees 
in Paris told the writer that he, the proviseur, 
was in his institution like a colonel at the head 
of his regimente No Paris lycee director would 
use such language now. The monachal ten- 
dency to isolate the pupil from home and soci- 
ety is growing less. The former antithesis be- 
tween school and life is melting away before 
pedagogic intelligence, and the school tends to 
become life. The best school is not only the 
one in which the students stand high at exami- 
nations, but the one in which they lead the best 
life. 

One may say that in a certain way France is 
fast realising the educational ideal of Victor 
Hugo, more than half a century ago. ''Primary 
school imposed upon all and the secondary 

^ Troiiillot, Pour Vidie laique, p. 258. 
' Annuaire siatistique, 1913. 



80 FRANCE UNDER THE REPUBLIC 

school offered to all." ^ This purpose of the 
nation and of educators to bring education 
closer to life has led them to recast their 
methods, with results disappointing to many, 
but above all to reformers. As most of them 
were State professors, it followed that they 
were the severest censors of their own work. 
The representatives of sectarian institutions^ 
find their own schools perfect, but this only 
shows the greater independence and the higher 
pedagogical ideals of the secular masters. The 
curricula, without breaking all connection with 
Latin and Greek, have been thoroughly mod- 
ernised, and German, as well as English, has 
now an important place. Recognising the dis- 
ciplinary and cultural value of the ancient 
classical languages, educators have made it 
possible for students prepared in modern lan- 
guages to acquire the others in the latter part of 
their course. Above all, the national vernacular 
must be taught first, and every other form of 
training must help to improve it and to keep 
it first. Sciences have a place that is growing 
more and more absorbing. Philosophy, which 
was scarcely taught at all during the Empire, 
is required for all complete secondary studies. 

* Les MisSrables, vol, VII, p. 30. 

« See Du Lac, R. P.. Jhuitea, p. 227. 



EDUCATION IN THE NEW LIFE 81 

While much has been done for young men in 
this particular field, a new era has also been 
opened for young women. Some noble attempts 
to provide higher education for them by Min- 
ister Duruy had relatively failed, because of the 
opposition of the bishops. Jules Ferry placed 
the whole matter upon a broad educational 
basis. ^ This movement has now acquired con- 
siderable momentum. The reasonableness of 
the higher education of women is so thoroughly 
accepted that no one discusses it now, and its 
former opponents impart it in their own insti- 
tutions. In 1881 there were but few secondary 
schools for women; in 1906 there were 41 lycees 
and 68 other institutions giving to women a par- 
tial secondary education. The attendance has 
increased from 4,500 to 32,500. In 1909 3,500 
young women had matriculated in the universi- 
ties of the land.2 Meanwhile it was recognised 
that women would be efficient for the moral 
teaching of boys.^ Numerous schools for women 
were created to prepare an efficient corps of 
primary teachers, and one was established at 

* When the question was debated in Parliament amidst the unreason- 
able opposition of conservatives, Ferry spoke of women who asked 
him the questions: "But what is the use of all this learning? What 
is it for? ..." He continued: "I could answer, 'To raise your chil- 
dren,' and it would be a good answer, though trivial, but I prefer to say, 
*To raise your husbands.' " (Rambaud, Jules Ferry, p. 135.) 

2 Le Siecle, March 30, 1909. 

• L'iducaiion morale dans Vuniversite, 1901, p. 73. 



82 FRANCE UNDER THE REPUBLIC 



Sevres to give the professors of secondary insti- 
tutions for girls the high training which they 
need. In speaking of this institution we must 
put away from our thought the pecuUar educa- 
tion associated with normal schools in this 
country. Sevres lacks only the classics to make 
its work the best given to women anywhere. 
Only candidates of great ability, recruited from 
all parts of France, may be admitted into the 
institution after the severest tests. It is not a 
common distinction to be a Sevrienne. 

We must, perhaps, look to the realm of su- 
perior education for the most marked advance. 
Freed from clerical interference, which was 
formerly a disturbing force at every point, it 
is conducted by a large body of men who have 
won a conspicuous place in the scientific world. 
The progress may be inferred from the com- 
parative numbers of chairs, of students, and of 
degrees.^ The two beautiful volumes pubHshed 

1 SUPERIOR EDUCATION 





1871 


1876 


1889 


1905 


1906 


Chairs in universities 

Students in medicine 

Students in science. 

Students in philosophy and 
literature 




625 

3,868 

121 

138 
6,000 


1,211 
6,455 
1,355 

2,358 


11,900 

1,101 

560 


35,670 


Total number of students 

Degrees granted 


8,936 

308 

73 


in medicine 


in letters, science, and law. . 




JULES FERRY 



EDUCATION IN THE NEW LIFE 83 

by the French government on the occasion of 
the San Francisco Exposition, La science fran- 
gatse, will be an astounding revelation to most 
readers of what France has done for scientific 
progress. The thirty -four papers by thirty-four 
distinguished scientists, dealing with French 
contributions to science, the associations that 
further it, and the scientific books and peri- 
odicals, of which there is a large number, have 
a greater significance when one remembers that 
the foremost contributors to this advance are 
university professors. These men have created 
an atmosphere of scientific enthusiasm and of 
scientific endeavour which has drawn from the 
institutions their best men as earnest searchers. 
The municipalities and the nation have nobly 
contributed to this work. In 1907 the municipal 
council of Paris voted to support nine chairs of 
higher learning in the city, to say nothing of 
other encouragements given to different forms 
of scientific work. Other cities have voted im- 
portant sums to encourage local universities. 
Individuals have come forward with generous 
gifts, while the Parliament has been most con- 
stant in its liberal support. The old institutions 
have been renovated and as a rule improved, 
though, by exception, we deplore the transforma- 
tion, nay, the destruction, of the celebrated 



84 FRANCE UNDER THE REPUBLIC 

Ecole riormale superieure, the Alma mater of so 
many famous men, like Jules Simon, Gaston 
Boissier, Taine, and Gabriel Monod. How- 
ever, every other institution took on a new 
life. That was particularly the case with the 
Sorbonne, foremost among the greatest uni- 
versities of the world. The Museum began to 
increase the service of its chairs and vast col- 
lections for the study of the natural sciences. 
The College de France, the vanguard of French 
science, has evolved and perfected the scope of 
its great work. It has become "a laboratory 
ceaselessly in a state of evolution," Mealing with 
the newer aspects of sciences. Lately the pur- 
pose of its chairs. was no longer bound to one 
subject, but the chair is named and devoted to 
the subject in which some great investigator 
has attained conspicuous scientific results. The 
aim is not so much the man for the chair as the 
chair that will permit the great scientist to find 
the highest use of his attainments. 

New institutions have been created, some of 
which constitute absolutely new departures, such 
as the Practical School of High Studies of the 
Sorbonne, the Sevres School for Women, the 
School of High Social Studies, the College of 
Social Sciences, the School of the Louvre, the 

1 Babelon, E., La Revue, July 29, 1911, p. 578. 



EDUCATION IN THE NEW LIFE 85 

Thiers Foundation, the National Agronomic 
Institute, the Colonial School, the School of 
Physics and Industrial Chemistry, the Pasteur 
Institute of Paris, the Pasteur Institute of Lille, 
the Free School of Political Sciences, the Social 
Museum, the Pedagogical Museum, the School 
of Anthropology, the School of High Commercial 
Studies, etc. There is being organised an in- 
stitute for the study of radium and various 
radiations which, on the physical side, will be 
affiliated with the Faculty of Sciences and on 
the biological side with the Pasteur Institute, 
Even in Algiers institutions have been founded 
with the view of making there, sooner or later, 
a great African university and a great African 
academy. A law was passed during the last 
days of 1889 to create this university. By the 
side of the celebrated French art schools of 
Rome and of Athens, there were established 
schools of history and of archaeology, not to 
speak of kindred institutions at Cairo, in Indo- 
China, or in Tunis. 

One of the most fruitful steps for the advance 
of higher learning has been the enlargement of 
the National Library with greatly increased facil- 
ities for research. The museums of Paris and, 
to some extent, of the provinces, have been in- 
creased and multiplied. The Louvre has been 



86 FRANCE UNDER THE REPUBLIC 

enriched by grants from the government, by 
the co-operation of the Societe des amis du 
Louvre, and by large gifts of individuals. The 
legacy of M. Chauchard will attain a value of 
at least $8,000,000. Individuals have created 
the establishments known as the Cernushi, 
Guimet, de Caen, Galliera, and Gustave Moreau 
museums. Recently was founded the Museum 
of Decorative Arts. Dutuit gave a collection 
worth many millions which, elsewhere than in 
Paris, would be called a museum. Broca left 
materials for the Museum of Anthropology, and 
Count de Chambrun made possible the accumu- 
lation of data bearing upon the social question at 
the Social Museum. Equally important is the 
Pedagogic Museum, where are centred all data 
needed by teachers. To the number of these 
institutions should be added the Museum of 
Comparative Sculpture, the Museum of Ethnog- 
raphy, the Carnavalet Museum, the Colonial 
Museum, the Artillery Museum, the Museum of 
the Palace of Justice, etc. All these, in their 
own way, are potent agencies of national edu- 
cation. 

Paris has not been alone in this direction, for 
museums have sprung up everywhere in large 
centres. The Guimet Museum, a museum of the 
religions of the Far East, was started in Lyons, 



EDUCATION IN THE NEW LIFE 87 

though later on transported to Paris. The Due 
d'Aumale gave his property of Chantilly to the 
French Institute so that there his rich collec- 
tions may be admired in the Musee Conde. In 
Aries, the poet Mistral founded the Arlesian 
Museum, devoted to relics and mementos of 
Provengal life. A local society interested in its 
provincial past founded the admirable museum, 
the Vieux-Honfleur,^ in Honfleur. In Bayonne 
was inaugurated the Musee Bonnat. M. Hector- 
Depasse organised the Societe du musee cantonal 
de Fresnay-surSarthe, M. Jules Lambart insti- 
tuted also a museum in Doullens (Somme). It 
would be tedious to mention all that has been 
done, both by individuals and by the govern- 
ment, in creating these foundations, instructive 
by what they contain as well as by the educa- 
tional work done in them. 

Among the most important agencies have been 
those of laboratories, to which we refer more 
fully later on, of scientific missions, of explora- 
tions in connection with the Ministry of Public 
Instruction. An achievement second to none 
has been the revival of old universities, and the 
creation of new ones. This is bound to raise the 
general level of life all over the country. It is 
also a step forward in the direction of educa- 

1 La Reme, Sept. 25, 1909, 



88 FRANCE UNDER THE REPUBLIC 

tional decentralisation so much needed, a step 
in keeping with the new spirit of the teachers. 
No one can now question the moral superior- 
ity of these men. In his book, Le malaise de 
la democratie, so severe against contemporary 
France, M. Gaston Deschamps says: "Recent 
statistics place the teaching body in the first 
rank of pubhc morahty."^ The same thing 
might be said of their open-mindedness. They 
seem ultra modernists to the conservatives, and 
conservatives to the ultra radicals; but the truth 
is that they are live, progressive men who, as a 
whole, would do great credit to any professional 
class in the country. 

One striking change in the situation is the 
greater freedom of the educator. He is no 
longer an adjunct of the priest, though now by 
an unfortunate, yet natural, reaction he has be- 
come too often his antagonist. Under the Em- 
pire the priest represented the greatest directing 
force in the lives of individuals; now it is the 
teacher. It is to be deprecated that both stand 
for different ideals which in their own eyes are 
mutually exclusive. In the conflict, the teachers 
are no longer isolated among themselves. To 
the united front of the clergy they oppose the 
body of teachers. One of their organisations. 



EDUCATION IN THE NEW LIFE 89 

the Federation des amicales d'instituteursy has 
96,000 members.^ Another is the Ligue de Ven- 
aeignement. This agency, though founded in the 
last days of the Empire, attained no great de- 
velopment until the Republic. It has federated 
some 4,000 independent societies, with 600,000 
members, the purpose of which is to advance 
and defend, if need be, free popular republican 
education. The more intense the attacks of the 
Clericals, the greater the sense of soUdarity 
which binds the teachers. They meet on the 
occasion of the conferences pedagogiques, when 
they compare experiences.^ There have been 
also instituted the National Pedagogic Con- 
gresses, in which are discussed all the problems 
of education by those who know its conditions 
and difficulties. French teachers, though poorly 
prepared for this by the Empire, have learned 
to conduct these meetings with ability, and gen- 
erally with becoming dignity. Time will show 
whether or no they will avoid an alliance with 
socialism, which, in our opinion, would be bane- 
ful. The organised educators of a country should 
not formally or otherwise identify themselves 
with any one party. The aspirations of some 
of them to form trades-unions, and identify 
themselves with the militant labour organisa- 

^ Le Siecle, April 19, 1909. 'Rambaud, Jules Ferry, p. 160. 



90 FRANCE UNDER THE REPUBLIC 

tions of the country, would be deplorable for 
the best mterests of schools. 

The administration of education also has been 
transformed. The reign of educational arbi- 
trariness, though not ended, has been singularly 
limited. The teachers are no longer the mutes 
who, under the Empire, accepted superior de- 
cisions concerning them with silence and awe. 
They cannot be dismissed without a hearing 
from the conseils academiques, the members of 
which, instead of being appointed by the min- 
ister, are now elected by their colleagues. The 
Superior Council of the Ministry of Pubhc In- 
struction has been reformed and also made 
elective. Its members are not raised to this high 
position because they are bishops or pastors, 
but because they are foremost among the 
educators of the country. The whole force of 
education is no longer the machine which led a 
minister of Napoleon III to say that by looking 
at his watch he could know what was taught, at 
that very moment, in any school of the country. 
It has become an organism in touch with the 
needs of Frenchmen. In it we see traces of the 
influence of such well-known educators as Gre- 
ard, Liard, Breal, Croiset, Lavisse, Pecaut, and 
others who had a keen understanding of the 
stupendous task before them. 



EDUCATION IN THE NEW LIFE 91 

In appreciating the educational record of the 
RepubKc one should remember that results have 
been accomplished notwithstanding an opposi- 
tion which was constant. So conscious were the 
legislators of the great needs in this realm that 
they consented to large requests for funds made 
by the friends of learning. Already in 1888 M. 
R. Fernandez, Mexican ambassador in Paris, 
said that the budget of education was twelve 
times that of the reign of Louis-Philippe, and 
five times that of the Empire.^ It was $4,800,- 
000 in 1870 and $59,336,000 in 1911.2 These 
figures do not include local appropriations, the 
sacrifices made for new buildings, nor the ex- 
tensive gifts of Catholics to sustain their uni- 
versities in Paris, Lille, Angers, and Lyons, the 
expenses of their boarding (colleges) and paro- 
chial schools. 

We differ absolutely from Catholics in their 
ideals of teaching as well as in their perpetual 
aim to control the national education; but we 
cannot fail to recognise the importance of their 
colossal work, or that of Protestants. Both 
have tended to check a certain uniformity in the 
State educational machinery. Among the best 
allied forces of education is the work of the 
Societe pour Vinstruction elementaire, of the As- 

» La France actuelle, 1888, p. 405. « Le Temps, Nov. 23, 1909. 



a£ FRANCE UNDER THE REPUBLIC 

sociation poly technique, and of the Association 
fhilotechnique. In 1875 was organised the 
Union frangaise de la jeunesse to combine ele- 
mentary education and professional training. 
The Alliance frangaise helps and sustains schools 
in every part of the world, and gives, in vari- 
ous parts of France — and largely in Paris — in- 
struction in the French language to foreigners. 
The Societe d' enseignement moderne, also founded 
under the Republic, has many courses of com- 
mercial, industrial, literary, and artistic educa- 
tion. There are other associations with the same 
end in view. Some French periodicals, apart 
from their direct influence by their reading 
matter, have done and are doing educational 
work. The Revue generate des Sciences organises 
annual scientific cruises; La Revue hebdomadairey 
Les Annates politiques et litteraires, and Foi et vie 
have courses of lectures of great value. Lectures 
for the masses with various purposes, but of 
some educational value, are given everywhere. 

With all this, we must not forget a large body 
of pedagogic literature which embraces almost 
every aspect of this great work of national 
training and bears in mind the experience of 
other nations performing a similar task. Phi- 
losophers, sociologists, physiologists, and, above 
all, psychologists have brought their contribu- 



EDUCATION IN THE NEW LIFE 9S 

tions to this work. The books on pedagogics 
have been enriched and deepened thereby. Six 
important periodical pubhcations, among others, 
are real educational levers, the Revue pedagogique^ 
now in its thirty-eighth year; the Revue inter" 
nationale de V enseignement, in its thirty-fifth 
year; the Revue universitaire, now in its twenty- 
fourth year; the Bulletin de la Societe libre pour 
r etude psychologique de V enfant; U Education, and 
VAnnee pedagogique — all were founded under 
the Republic.^ 

What has been changed more than all else 
is the spirit of this education. It is no longer 
the storing of the mind with abstract formulae 
and traditional ideas, the continuance of the 
old neo-monastic ideal, the a priori distrust of 
the child, the gloomy theory of a penitential 
education. It is the free, cheerful development 
of the child along the line of experience and 
reason, respecting and trusting his undeveloped 
powers. Proceeding from the concrete to the 
abstract, and from examples to generalisations, 
it embodies all the best suggestions of psycholo- 
gists, like Ribot and Binet, as well as those of 
the great contemporary educators. Its aim is 
no longer knowledge but the possession of what 
Fouillee calls idees-forces, which translate them- 

* La Science frangaise, vol. I, p. 76. 



94 FRANCE UNDER THE REPUBLIC 

selves into lives and characters. We do not 
ignore the fact that much of the old form of 
teaching is yet only too common, but it becomes 
more and more dispelled by the new ideals. 
When we survey the work done in this field we 
find ourselves confronted with one of the great- 
est enterprises of education in our time. If we 
look for one of the great determinants of prog- 
ress in any domain — agriculture, industry, 
commerce, art, science, philosophy, philan- 
thropy, and even religion — we find it every- 
where in the school. 



CHAPTER V 

CHANGES IN LITERATURE, ART, AND 
PHILOSOPHY 

THERE has always been a closer relation 
between education and letters in France 
than in other countries, and hence from 
the achievements already noted in one realm we 
may expect similar progress in the other. The 
Hterary history of the country during the last 
thirty years would compare favourably with the 
most famous period of the same duration in the 
past. The characteristic traits of this literature 
have been more truth, more ideas, a closer touch 
with life, fewer abstractions, more facts, a less 
sonorous, but more real, love of humanity. It 
has stood less for the classes and more for the 
masses. It has become more democratic, even 
in the hands of aristocratic writers. The pessi- 
mistic strain in much of it is a transient literary 
fashion rather than the embodiment of national 
views of life. The departments of literature 
have been so differentiated as to produce a 
greater variety than ever before, and their rep- 

95 



96 FRANCE UNDER THE REPUBLIC 

resentatives have been superior as real men and 
women. 

Criticism, without being less aesthetic, has be- 
come more potent by being more sociological 
and more philosophical. It has become rich 
in men of merit and of originality. Scherer 
belongs to the Republic as much as, if not 
even more than, to the Empire which was dis- 
tinguished by that "prince of critics," Sainte- 
Beuve. Brunetiere, Lemaitre, Sarcey, Bourget, 
Faguet, Anatole France, Pellissier, Larroumet, 
Rod, and de Vogiie constitute a group of crit- 
ical intelligence exerting its many-sided influ- 
ence over a much wider range and superior to 
any which could have been dreamed of under 
Napoleon III. Instead of the literary formal 
aesthetic judgment of a previous period, it has 
tended more and more to be the criticism of 
life, of the forces that make for life and their 
expression in literature. 

Sardou, de Bornier, Coppee, and Rostand have 
given a new splendour to the historical drama. 
Dumas fils, de Curel, Paul Hervieu, Brieux, 
Lavedan, and Bernstein have plays of unusual 
power, with moral lessons which lift them above 
the realm of amusement and make them potent 
social forces. These men have written plays 
of singular originality, strong psychological and 



LITERATURE, ART, PHILOSOPHY 97 

moral analysis, with an ethical purpose which 
is new. The lighter forms of the drama were 
not richer in grace, in fancy, in wit, or in uncon- 
scious immorality during the Second Empire. 

The lyric muse has more than held her own; 
in fact one may say that there has been a revival 
of poetry in the country. Victor Hugo gave his 
last songs under the Republic. Then there are 
the works of de Heredia, Coppee, Dorchain, and, 
above all, those of Sully Prudhomme, one of the 
greatest poets of France. It is not insignificant 
that he was the first man of letters to receive the 
Nobel prize. Even the other poets, Verlaine, 
Jean Labor, de Regnier, and many others, be- 
sides doing much creditable work, have added 
new stops to the organ of French poetry. The 
French Academy has never crowned so many 
poets as under the Republic. An anthology of 
contemporary French poetry,^ published in 1906, 
gives extracts from 240 poets. It is true that all 
did not live during the Republic and all are not 
French citizens, but there are in this work omis- 
sions enough, if given, to sustain the opinion 
that at least 240 French poets have, of recent 
years, written poetry deemed worthy, by a lead- 
ing Paris professor, to be represented in extracts 
intended for schools. It is a significant fact 

^ Walch, G., Anfhologie des foetes contemporaina, 1906. 



98 FRANCE UNDER THE REPUBLIC 

that in June, 1909, there was given in Paris a 
public poetical competition of the best poems of 
the year. The organisation of this festival of 
the muses was very deficient, but the event in 
itself is an index of genuine interest in poetry. 

In fiction, Daudet, Loti, Rod, Bourget, Ana- 
tole France, Maupassant, Theuriet, Bordeaux, 
Barres, Bazin, Zola, Huysmans, de Vogiie, and 
Jules Verne would, as a band, compare favour- 
ably with any other group of French novelists 
at any period in the history of their country. 
Under them, the French novel has evolved in 
almost every direction, becoming at once more 
idealistic in Spirit and more realistic in sub- 
stance. While as a whole untrue to French 
fife, it has come nearer to it; and it is, to-day, 
a great agent for the distribution of all forms 
of knowledge to the masses, a vehicle for the 
discussion of all possible questions, and a great 
sociological force. During the Empire, with 
notable exceptions, it was an admirable toy; 
now it has become a potent social tool. 

Political oratory, as brilliant as, and more 
solid than during the preceding reign, may point 
with pride to Gambetta, Leon Say, Challemel- 
Lacour, de Mun, Jaures, Deschanel, and Briand. 
While these men are still largely inspired by the 
great French traditional oratory, one that lays 




LEON GAMBETTA 



LITERATURE, ART, PHILOSOPHY 99 

especial stress upon the aesthetic side of pubhc 
speaking and delights in Ciceronian periods, a 
new form of public eloquence has appeared 
which is the simple, straightforward voice of the 
masses of the nation. Judicial eloquence has 
been signally represented by Rousse, Waldeck- 
Rousseau, Betolaud, and Labori. Academic 
eloquence, either in the universities or at the 
French Institute, has rivalled its best days by 
the elevated discourses of Lavisse, of Brunetiere, 
of Gaston Boissier, of Renan, and of several 
others. The Catholic, Protestant, and Jewish 
pulpits have never attained such a high level; 
great orators are not common, but they have 
never been so. Simple, popular public speaking, 
found now in every quarter of French society, 
and voicing every popular interest, is a child of 
the Republic. 

A whole literature, able and wholesome, has 
been devoted to the artistic and picturesque his- 
tory of the country. Essays are very numerous. 
The literary productions of reviews have be- 
come absorbing in France as in other countries. 
Corporate institutions give increasing encour- 
agement to literature. The prizes of the French 
Academy have increased to such a degree that 
not infrequently the "Immortals" have found 
themselves embarrassed to dispose of them. 



100 FRANCE UNDER THE REPUBLIC 

Last year these prizes were distributed to the 
famiUes of the many writers who fell at the front 
in defending their country. There has also been 
founded the De Goncourt Academy, with the 
same end in view, though with different methods 
from those of the illustrious company of the 
Palais Mazarin. A society of eminent French 
women gives an annual prize to a woman 
writer. It would be impossible to enumerate 
the new encouragements given by different 
societies to various litterateurs, not to speak of 
the Prix litteraire de Rome, founded nine years 
ago by the government to enable annually a 
young writer to travel. Among other incentives 
to writers is the prestige which they enjoy. As 
soon as they have won distinction they become 
the lions of French Salons. They have become 
the truly privileged men of French society. 

In the domain of fine arts the success of the 
great exhibitions and the Salons have been elo- 
quent refutations of former aristocratic taunts 
that a democracy is doomed to an inferior art. 
Here again the Republic introduced the principle 
of liberty by allowing artists to organise their 
Salon themselves. When a second one was 
founded, the same policy was followed. The 
government has done nobly. In every direction 
it has sustained efforts to lift and popularise 



LITERATURE, ART, PHILOSOPHY 101 

art. The budget of Fiue Arts has increased 133 
per cent. In 1874 was organised in the Ministry 
of Public Instruction the Commission de Vin- 
ventaire general des richesses d^art de la France,^ 
whose work is still going on. Apparently few 
artistic and historical mementos of the past have 
escaped its researches. Never before was so 
much done anywhere to restore and save old 
monuments, — the Mont St. Michel, the Roman 
arenas of the south, Roman gates, mediaeval and 
Renaissance castles, like those of Pierrefonds and 
Azay-le-Rideau, historic town halls, old mu- 
seums, cathedrals all over the country, churches, 
and chapels. 

It would take a volume to set forth the work 
done to bring out the real beauty of the old ec- 
clesiastical monuments, or at times to protect 
them from a clergy having no sense of their 
sesthetic worth. The renowned chateaux have 
been made repositories of great art treasures, 
where they now may be admired by every one. 
The Due d'Aumale made the French Academy 
trustee for the nation of the Chateau of Chan- 
tilly. M. Jacques Siegfried gave the Chateau 
de Langeais, while the Minister of Fine Arts 

^ Committee for the general inventory of the artistic richness of France. 
It seeks to preserve any building or object having historical artistic 
interest. (Lasteyrie, Bibliogra'phie des travaux hiatoriques et archSolo- 
giques, vol. I, p. 167.) 



102 FRANCE UNDER THE REPUBLIC 

did his utmost to make every fine structure of 
artistic or historic worth the property of the 
nation. 

The Hotel de Ville of Paris, the new Sorbonne, 
the Trocadero, the Gare d'Orleans, the Alexan- 
der III Bridge, the Petit Palais, and the Grand 
Palais are among the most superb erections of 
our time. One can hardly praise too highly the 
grace and elegance of the new hotels, such as the 
Palace Hotel on the Champs-Elysees. The city 
of Paris gives prizes to those who erect the finest 
houses, to those who, with flowers, decorate most 
felicitously the fronts of their homes, ^ and even 
to those who revive in the most picturesque man- 
ner the old-fashioned commercial signs. Who 
could be so blinded by prejudice as to fail to 
see the aesthetic progress of Paris ? Do not the 
parks and squares show innumerable evidences 
of improvement ? Are not the streets of Paris, 
so admired by Philip Gilbert Hamerton^ a 
quarter of a century ago, much more attractive 
now ? There is certainly no possible comparison 
between the plain, monotonous, geometrical 
architecture of the city during the Second Em- 
pire, and the beautiful, graceful, varied, and 
dignified character of recent Parisian structures. 

The same thing might be said of a goodly 

^ U Illustration, Jan. 9, 1904. 

* Paris in Old and Present Times, 1885, p. 219. 



LITERATURE, ART, PHILOSOPHY 103 

number of cities, like Tours and Orleans, while 
in the rural districts better architectural ideas 
are making way. Even the viaducts of rail- 
roads constructed in recent years indicate ad- 
vance. The mud houses and the thatched roofs 
of a former generation are replaced by some- 
thing vulgar enough at times but yet better. 
When did French sculpture, as a whole, exhibit 
more vitality and more power than during the 
period of Carpeaux, Fremiet, Dubois, Chapu, 
Barrias, Guillaume, Falguiere, Idrac, Aime Mil- 
let, Mercie, Bartholome, Dalou, Rodin, and Bar- 
tholdi.^ When were such medals produced as 
those of Chapelain, of Chapu, of Dupuis, or 
the inimitable work of Roty.^ What can the 
Napoleonic regime oppose to the engravings of 
Leopold Flameng ?^ What period of French his- 
tory of equal duration could present an array of 
names like Paul Baudry, Meissonier, Cabanel, 
Chartran, Carolus-Duran, Benjamin-Constant, 
Jules Breton, Rosa Bonheur, Puvis de Chavan- 
nes, FrauQois Flameng, Bastien-Lepage, Jean- 
Paul Laurens, Emile Levy, Mme. Edmont- 
Breton, Protais, Moreau, Bonnat, Ribot, Manet, 
and Monet — to mention only a few names ? 
Nothing shows the power of contemporary 

* Notwithstanding the assertions of critics who wished to make 
Flameng a Belgian, we fearlessly assert that, though born in Brussels, 
he was of French origin, removed early to Paris, and was a thorough 
French artist. 



104 FRANCE UNDER THE REPUBLIC 

French art more than its radiation all over the 
civilised world. Never more than now have 
foreigners resorted to French art schools or sub- 
jected themselves to the teaching of French 
masters. In all the museums one is struck by 
the prominence of artistic works produced by 
France during the last four decades. Rodin has 
some of his statuary in every centre of artistic 
culture. Eminent architects turn to Gallic ar- 
tists for important mural paintings, whether it 
be the symbolistic canvas of Puvis de Chavan- 
nes for the. Public Library of Boston, or "The 
Surrender of Yorktown," by Jean-Paul Laurens, 
for the Court House of Baltimore. French ar- 
tistic inspiration shows itself in the works of 
great American artists whether they build 
Trinity Church of Boston or the Public Library 
of the same city. 

French architects have carried the day in 
almost all great international competitions. 
Benard designed the plans for the University of 
California; Rey, the Government Palace of Rio 
Grande do Sul, Brazil; Cordonnier, the Peace 
Palace of The Hague; Bouvard, the Pantheon 
of Brussels to the memory of illustrious Bel- 
gians; Robert and Hameau, the Government 
Palace of Lima, Peru; Flamant and Toussaint, 
the Parliament Building of Montevideo; Cret, 



LITERATURE, ART, PHILOSOPHY 105 

the home of South American republics in 
Washington. One can hardly enumerate the 
most important commercial, philanthropic, and 
residential structures erected by French archi- 
tects in other lands. Few are the great cities 
which have not some monuments by French 
artists. Landowski and Bouchard have been se- 
lected to erect the Calvin monument in Geneva; 
and when it was decided to have a monument 
symbolising the union of the world by the 
Postal Union, Paul de Saint-Marceau created 
his superb work which is now one of the finest 
ornaments of Berne. 

At home applied arts are doing wonders for 
the beautifying of French homes as well as of 
public buildings. Mural paintings, elegant wall- 
paper, artistic furniture, exquisite cut glass, 
beautiful ceramics, those of Sevres from the 
government manufacture, and those from indi- 
vidual works in Limoges and elsewhere, the su- 
perb tapestries of the Gobelins and of Beauvais, 
not to speak of those of independent manufac- 
ture, ornamental leather, and choice bookbind- 
ings show the progress of the decorative arts. 

In music the work of Gounod, Massenet, 
Saint-Saens, Guilmant, Widor, men appreciated 
as much in foreign countries as at home, pre- 
pared the way for an especially French school 



106 FRANCE UNDER THE REPUBLIC 

that has become one of the most significant 
factors in modern musical art. "Cesar Franck, 
d'Indy, Gabriel Faure, Chausson, Augusta 
Holmes, Charpentier, and many others drew 
the attention of the musical world to the serious 
purpose of the French composer as well as to 
his sensitive feeling for musical colour. It re- 
mained for Debussey to become pre-eminently 
its champion and to stand forth as the founder 
of a new type of composition that has influenced 
musicians everywhere. His opera, Pelleas et 
Melisande, is epoch-making, and his orchestral 
and chamber music, his songs and his piano 
pieces have contributed a distinctly new treat- 
ment of musical material. Dukas, Ravel, and 
others who are working in the same vein give 
assurance that this is likely to be a permanent 
and valuable contribution."^ 

The Opera, by reason of the variety of its 
repertoire and its interpretation of the greatest 
French masterpieces, has never been such a 
power for high musical culture as now. Serious 
music has never been more popular. The 
concerts organised by Colonne in 1873, by 
Lamoureux in 1882, and the Chanteurs de 
Saint-Gervais, later on transformed into the 
Schola cantorum, have done much to popularise 

* George Coleman Gow, Mus.D. 



LITERATURE, ART, PHILOSOPHY 107 

good music. There are ten concerts worthy of 
the name for one under the Second Empire. 
Musical organisations, bands, and choral so- 
cieties are everywhere. 

Theatrical art has representatives of whom 
any country might be proud. Mounet-Sully, 
Sarah Bernhardt, CoqueUn, and Lebargy have 
attained a great eminence in their interpretation 
of the French drama. Not only has the dramatic 
repertoire become richer than before, but it has 
also been rendered more cosmopolitan by the 
addition of the masterpieces of Greece, of Rome, 
of Scandinavia, of Germany, and by the repre- 
sentation of Shakespeare, at times with incom- 
parable splendour. The Comite Shakespearien 
is doing much to deepen interest in the great 
English dramatist. Contemporary British and 
American playwrights have also had their pieces 
presented. 

A noteworthy trait of this artistic progress is 
that in all its phases it tends more and more to 
reach the masses and to help them. With that 
end in view, the government has forwarded this 
movement by as many measures as possible. 
The actors and actresses of the Theatre Frangais 
have been allowed to play in various parts of 
the country. Adequate support has been given 
to the Bibliotheque de V enseignement des Beaux- 



108 FRANCE UNDER THE REPUBLIC 

Arta, which has endeavoured to popularise every 
known form of art, while the Louvre continues 
its superb work of reproducing its art treasures, 
either by casts, by engravings or by photographs, 
which are sold at an insignificant price. Private 
enterprise has issued works of artistic popular- 
isation in which one knows not what to admire 
most, the exceptional character of the works or 
the prices at which they are put into the hands 
of readers. Art, which under the Empire was 
the privilege of the few, has come to be the 
common heritage of the many. If this popu- 
larisation has been attended with debasing uses 
of a noble power, it is true of almost all the arts 
of peace, and in all countries. 

As to philosophy, until the foundation of the 
Republic it had been discouraged by the Church, 
and consequently by the government, as danger- 
ous. It had never enjoyed freedom. It is a 
sad fact to repeat that French philosophy never 
was free. In order to exist, it had been com- 
pelled to be extremely considerate of theology 
and the clergy who, at any time, could have se- 
cured its exclusion from the schools. Another 
misfortune of French philosophy was that it 
had to be extremely literary to secure readers, as 
a philosophical reading public had yet to be con- 
stituted. The finest works on the subject were 



LITERATURE, ART, PHILOSOPHY 109 

literary philosophical discussions, without any 
fundamental principles, rather than philosophy 
itself. At best it was the eclecticism of Cousin 
corrected by his disciples. Even in this form it 
was unpopular among conservatives. In fact, 
after the coup d'Etat Napoleon, seeking the sup- 
port of the clergy, forbade the teaching of any 
philosophy at all, though an exception was made 
for formal logic. ^ The emperor relented later 
on, but instruction in this field was always more 
or less under suspicion. 

Under the Republic philosophical studies have 
been stimulated. Professors of philosophy have 
become numerous. The Faculty of Letters of 
Paris has nine, the College de France has three, 
the Catholic Institute has five, not to speak of 
other institutions for secondary education. Every 
lycee and college is provided with at least one 
professor of philosophy. Let one read the fol- 
lowing text-books: Boirac, A.-E., Cours elemen- 
taire de philosophic;^ F. J., Cours de philosophic;^ 
Janet, P., Elements de philosophic scientifique ct 
de philosophic morale;^ Penjon, A., Precis de phi- 
losophie;^ Malapert, P., Lcgons de philosophic^ 
— five manuals of philosophy among those that 

^ Janet, P., La Philosophie frangaise contemporainef 1879, p. 50; H. 
Taifie, sa vie et sa correspondance, vol. I, p. 187; Lavisse, E., Souvenirs, 
p. 210. 

» 1902. « Tours. 1896. « 1890. » 1897. « 1907. 



110 FRANCE UNDER THE REPUBLIC 

are used — and one cannot avoid the conclusion 
that pedagogic philosophy is presented wisely 
and efficiently to French students. Further, 
there is a common agreement among those who 
have been sympathetic observers of French 
secondary schools that philosophy is the sub- 
ject best taught, and one taught by the ablest 
men among educators.^ 

Formerly the subject-matter of this study 
was given in a very definite programme from 
which the professor was not free to depart, 
either in the scope of his course or in the official 
doctrine. Now the State philosophy, like the 
State Church, is disappearing.^ Philosophical 
teachers are no longer a timid little group of 
thinkers, but a distinguished class of earnest, 
truth-loving, sincere men, who mark a signal 
advance upon their predecessors. They are 
not the narrow sectarian rationalists repre- 
sented by the clericals, but men who, as a rule, 
believe in genuine freedom of thought. At 
first, students were led by the desire to find 
in philosophy weapons against what they called 
"ecclesiastical despotism" rather than by the 
love of truth, but now the polemical stage is 

^ Pour et contre Venseignemeni philosophique, 1894. See letters by 
M. M. Boutroux, Janet, and Fouillee. 

2 Binet, A., "L'Evolution de I'enseignement philosophique," in 
L'AnnSe psyckologique, 1908, p. 163. 



LITERATURE, ART, PHILOSOPHY 111 

passed. The former tendency to delight in the 
display of argumentative skill, in philosophical 
skirmishing, has been gradually replaced by en- 
deavours to give a larger place to reality, to 
develop a greater capacity for reasoning from 
facts, and to cultivate philosophy for its own 
worth. 

The system propounded in the student world 
has been the eclectic theism of Cousin, now 
more and more superseded by neo-Kantism,^ 
though the professors have had their ideas some- 
what coloured by the evolutionism of Spencer 
and tinged with Bergsonism. It may be added 
that this teaching has no longer the unity of 
former days, but the genuine philosophical stu- 
dent cannot deplore it. So great has been the 
interest aroused that even the Catholic Church, 
in her institutions, is forced to give a place, 
and an important one, to philosophical studies 
which formerly were avoided. Some of her pro- 
fessors are men of mark. There has been a re- 
newal of philosophical life in her work of apolo- 
getics, for which she has never deserved more 
credit. 

Men of note, who were also men of character, 
have singularly helped this movement. Renou- 

^ See Bninschvicg, L'idSalisme contem'poTain, 1905; Arreat, Dix anjiies 
de ^hilosophie, 1901. 



112 FRANCE UNDER THE REPUBLIC 

vier — who never held a single official position in 
the university — who scarcely ever had any per- 
sonal contact with well-known metaphysicians, 
except to attack them, often with a violence 
hardly tempered with courtesy — who antago- 
nised all the moral foibles of his contemporaries, 
ever holding up the sacredness of ''the categor- 
ical imperative" — who consecrated his fortune 
and his life to his philosophical apostleship — 
wrought a profound change in French philoso- 
phy. No man did more than he to fight morbid 
scepticism and to place philosophical specula- 
tions upon an ethical basis. 

Lachelier differed from Renouvier in this, that 
he directly inspired a whole generation of stu- 
dents of the Superior Normal School of Paris 
who became uncommon teachers. Paul Janet 
was for a long time the defender of philosophy 
against narrow materialists as well as against 
narrower theologians. He was a brilliant ex- 
pounder and critic of the thought of others. No 
one was a more illuminating interpreter of Kant, 
and no one more luminously applied philosophy 
to the solution of the burning questions of his 
time. 

The indefatigable Fouillee stands high among 
philosophers. While he attracted much atten- 
tion by the discussion of his les Idees-forces, he 



LITERATURE, ART, PHILOSOPHY 113 

also published important works of historical phi- 
losophy. His two books, Z^ mouvement positiviste^ 
and Le mouvement idealiste,'^ gave able discus- 
sions of the trend of contemporary French spec- 
ulation. Several of his works were masterful 
and timely. La psychologie du peuple frangais^ 
and La France au point de vue moral^ are the best 
books available for one who would penetrate 
into the deepest life of France and understand 
the French of to-day. Free from national van- 
ity, served by an immense and fresh erudition, 
inspired by the objective spirit, these volumes 
are the deepest analyses known to the writer of 
the ethnographical, the psychological, and eth- 
ical characteristics of the nation. His Es- 
quisse psychologique des peuples europeens,^ is 
a rare study of the traits of the leading peo- 
ples of Europe. Ten years before R. G. Usher 
published his Pan-Germanism^ 1913, and J. A. 
Cram issued his Germany and England^ 1914, 
purporting to reveal to us a new Germany, 
Fouillee had given us a much deeper and truer 
interpretation of German thought, feelings and 
ideals.^ 

Rising upon science to great speculative 
heights, Henri Poincare has rendered great ser- 

11896. U896. 3 1898. * 1900. « 190S. 

• Eaquisse psychologique des pewples euroj)iens, p. 245. 



114 FRANCE UNDER THE REPUBLIC 

vices to philosophy by showing the limitations 
of the sciences and the legitimate philosophical 
conclusions that may be drawn from them. His 
books, La Science et Vhypoihese and La Valeur 
de la science, are epoch-making. At this point 
his name is indissolubly associated with that of 
Emile Boutroux, his brother-in-law. The two 
men, both disciples of Kant and upholders of 
the *' practical reason," have interpenetrated 
each other with their own spirit. Boutroux 
has done most of his best work as an inspiring 
teacher. His life, like his philosophy, is a Hfe 
of action. He has been the strong and gracious 
personality that one always delights to see 
and hear at congresses where his co-opera- 
tion has always been prized. His signal work, 
De la Contingence des his de la nature, is, per- 
haps, the strongest refutation of determinism 
ever made, one commanding alike the admira- 
tion of scientists and philosophers. He op- 
posed materialism as energetically as Renou- 
vier, more efficiently perhaps, because more 
gently, showing its inability to explain and 
help life. Frangois Pillon is not far out of the 
way when he speaks of this philosophy as "a 
thinned, reformed, and perfected pragmatism."^ 
Bergson, the eminent professor of the College 

^ L' Annie philosophique, 1908, p. 174. 



LITERATURE, ART, PHILOSOPHY 115 

de France, stands out also conspicuously by his 
strength and originality. No one among con- 
temporary French philosophers is so familiar 
with the speculations of his own kind or so origi- 
nal in adding to them. His works are not many, 
but each one of them is exceptional, that is, 
mastexly and creative. He has condensed the 
essence of his thought in his magnum opus, 
L' evolution creatrice} It is the ablest philosophy 
of evolutionism which has ever been penned by 
a Frenchman. Bergson claims to have placed 
** metaphysics upon the basis of experience and 
by appealing to science, consciousness, and in- 
tuition to have constituted a philosophy capa- 
ble of furnishing, not only general theories, 
but also concrete explanations of particular 
facts." ^ His system, however brilliantly 
sketched, has not fully passed out of the period 
of formation. His fundamental views of all, 
ideas, things, and men in a ceaseless and end- 
less movement impelled by the vital impulses, 
has been called "mobilism," while those who 
resent his disparagement of knowledge call it 
"anti-intellectualism" and "irrationalism."^ It 
decidedly seems inconsistent for us to have a 
philosophy at all if knowledge is so unreliable. 

* 1908. ' La Science francaise, vol. I, p. 29. 

• Binet, V Annie psychologiquCy 1908, p. 199, 



116 FRANCE UNDER THE REPUBLIC 

He uses the term "intuition" in all kinds of 
ways.^ His "vital impulse," his great hypo- 
thesis, may seem excessive when one takes a 
calm view of the universe. One fact is certain: 
he has enriched the French language by creat- 
ing much-needed literary forms and coining 
new expressions describing life. One of the 
greatest services that he has rendered is, per- 
haps, the great enthusiasm which he has called 
forth for philosophical questions. 

The men just mentioned are only a few in a 
noble company, among whom we find Levy- 
Bruhl, Dauriac, Seailles, Roberty, G. Lyon, 
who have done superb service. We should like 
also to mention Rauh, and above all Auguste 
Sabatier, who is so inspiring.^ Among psy- 
chologists Ribot stands conspicuous by his per- 
sonal work of investigation. As a professor of 
experimental and of comparative psychology 
he has given a great impulse to such studies in 
France. Among those who have won great 
distinction in the same realm we must also 
mention Pierre Janet, of the College de France, 
and Georges Dumas at the Sorbonne. It may 
not be inappropriate to mention here the philo- 

* Benda, J., Le Bergsonisme ou une philosofhie de la mobilitS, 1912, p. 
33, 40, 47, and 49. 

2 See the brilliant survey of French philosophy with a valuable bibli- 
ography by Henri Bergson, in La Science frangaisey vol. I, p. 15. 



LITERATURE, ART, PHILOSOPHY 117 

sophical interest centring upon the two French 
schools of mental healing; that of Nancy, 
laying stress upon the physiological side of hyp- 
notism, and that of the Salpetriere, which em- 
phasized the more profound aspects of sugges- 
tive therapeutics. Charcot and his pupil Fere 
have been conspicuous workers in this field. 

One may form an idea of the great number 
of these philosophers by examining the exten- 
sive and varied collections of philosophical 
works issued by the publisher, F. Alcan, to 
whom philosophy owes a debt of gratitude for 
his eminent services. The Bihliotheque de phi- 
losophie scientifique under M. Gustave Lebon 
would also offer important works for the same 
purpose. There are, besides, the philosophi- 
cal reviews: that of Renouvier and Pillon, La 
critique philosophique, founded in 1872, main- 
tained by the energetic spirit of these two men 
until 1889; the Revue philosophique of M. 
Ribot, started in 1876; the Revue de metaphy- 
sique et de morale of Xavier Leon, begun in 
1893, In 1901 was founded the Institut psy- 
chologique, in which present-day problems are 
studied by committees and lectures given by 
French and foreign professors. Reports of its 
work are given in its Bulletin, In 1901 was 
founded the Societe frangaise de philosophie. 



118 FRANCE UNDER THE REPUBLIC 

Other groupings for work have been organised. 
To this we must add the Annee philosophiquey 
the Annee psychologique, and the Annee socio- 
logique, three pubhcations devoted to three per- 
fectly separate spheres, but all discussing, and 
discussing ably, some aspects of philosophical 
questions. 

All these indices of a vigorous philosophical 
life point to an activity, the extent of which can 
only be grasped when one remembers the able 
theses which have been published in the uni- 
versities, in the schools of theology, as well as 
the great bibliography of the philosophical works 
published during the last forty years. All these 
manifestations of philosophical energy testify to 
an intense mental labour, and to a deep trans- 
formation of the French mind. It may be fear- 
lessly stated that in these philosophical efforts 
hardly any part of the speculative domain has 
been left untouched. The problems of "the 
whence" and "the whither," of the origin of 
things, of the laws of human conduct, of the 
ultimate destiny of man, of the existence or 
non-existence of God, have been approached 
with an independence which does not shrink 
either from fearless affirmation or negation; 
let us say that negation is the exception rather 
than the rule. 



LITERATURE, ART, PHILOSOPHY 119 

The true and candid spirit of the leading 
representatives of the philosophical schools has 
brought them nearer one another, while among 
the greater number is seen a concern for moral 
issues impossible in the days of enthusiasm for 
the teachings of Taine. In fact, the schools 
have so interpenetrated one another as to have 
nearly disappeared. M. Gabriel Seailles says: 
"It is certain that there is at the present hour in 
France a philosophical movement, a very living 
thought, very active without our being able to 
mark the preponderance of any one system ex- 
cept in a general way. It is the reign of life and 
of liberty."^ This philosophical alertness tends 
to create a public of philosophical readers. In 
countries of Protestant culture such a public 
exists. The free philosophical discussion of all 
great problems, religious and other, develops 
an interest which finds expression in wider 
reading, not stopping at the frontier of the 
world of intellectual speculations. The new 
philosophical predilection has certainly deep- 
ened the thinking of Frenchmen, arrested the 
thoughts of many of them upon the great prob- 
lems of life, and given them a clearer moral con- 
sciousness. Philosophical intelligence not only 
radiates from the schools, from the writings of 

* Private letter to the writer. 



120 FRANCE UNDER THE REPUBLIC 

independent thinkers, but even from much of 
French contemporary Hterature and especially 
from poetry, the drama, and fiction. If now 
almost every citizen can read, it is a further fact 
that every public man who is at least a bachelor 
of letters, doctors, lawyers, pastors, most jour- 
nalists, and most novelists have more or less 
philosophy. 

One cannot rejoice too much over this grow- 
ing sway of philosophy; for with the wide and 
sudden spread of common-school education, the 
remarkable extension of the press, the unpre- 
cedented circulation of books, the increase of 
travel, the military service, and other factors, 
a whole flood of ill-digested, uncorrelated in- 
formation was suddenly scattered through the 
country. This would have brought about a 
mental chaos which might have been fatal, had 
not philosophy become a national force to 
bring about mental order, penetrating in differ- 
ent ways into the various social strata of French 
democracy. It has singularly modified and 
lessened the vulgar materialism which comes 
everywhere with wealth; it has exploded in- 
numerable bubbles of religious or irreUgious 
fanaticism, while it has given a higher rational 
end to education. 

No less significant is the development of 



LITERATURE, ART, PHILOSOPHY 121 

sociological studies, carried on in many direc- 
tions. We see the influence of this activity in 
works of social reform, in politics, in the newer 
conceptions of history, of literature, and religion. 
One cannot overlook efforts like those of Ed- 
mond Demolins, the author of that well-meant 
but inadequate book, A quoi tient la superiorite 
des Anglo-Saxons ? and the disciples whom he 
has grouped around him to continue the work of 
Le Play for the betterment of society. Through 
the Societe d^economie sociale, founded after the 
Franco-Prussian War, they have done no little, 
in a conservative way, for social improvement, 
centring their efforts upon what is to them the 
great social unit, the family. The large number 
of monographs upon France which have been 
published by the members of this organisation 
must eventually tell. 

The best work of sociologists and economists 
is yet done by those connected with the institu- 
tions of learning. Much more than those just 
referred to they are animated with the scientific 
spirit. Abreast of the work of other countries, 
they all have striven to place sociology upon a 
firmer foundation. Some make it a part of 
philosophy, others a science; but whatever be 
their point of view, they propagate sounder con- 
ceptions of society and of the best way to im- 



12£ FRANCE UNDER THE REPUBLIC 

prove it. Tarde, who claimed to have found a 
scientific basis for sociology in the laws of 
imitation, made his countrymen do much think- 
ing. Durkheim has done brilliant work, and 
edited that rich and suggestive publication, the 
Annee sociologique, Gide, well known at home 
and abroad, is one of the ablest social investi- 
gators and social workers of Europe. Bougie 
combines the qualities of German scholarship 
with the best traits of French savants. He 
wrought clearly and profoundly upon the prob- 
lems of modern society. Paul Leroy-Beaulieu, 
the eminent professor at the College de France 
and editor of L'economiste frangaisy added to 
his claims as an eminent scientist a remarkable 
record of intelligence and courage, when his 
was the only journalistic voice in France pro- 
testing against the Panama iniquities. No 
man has been a more competent interpreter of 
the colonial work of France. 

Outside of the educational world, yet closely 
in touch with it, are able economists affecting 
the nation through journalism. Among them 
we should mention Yves Guyot, who has taken 
a noble stand in all questions, and ever been 
the friend of economic liberty; Alfred Neymarck, 
editor of Le Rentier, and Edmond Thery, editor 
of L'economiste Europeen, men whose point of 



LITERATURE, ART, PHILOSOPHY 123 

view may not be ours, but whose vital influence 
cannot be overlooked. The leading character- 
istic of literature, art, and philosophy during 
the last forty years has been the manifestation 
of astounding energy. 



CHAPTER VI 

THE NEW ACTIVITY IN HISTORY AND 
SCIENCE 

THE progress of the historical sciences has 
been epoch-making. The most impor- 
tant needs for progress in this realm are 
absolute freedom of inquiry, opportunities of 
research as well as of investigation, and free- 
dom of speech. The Republic has furnished 
them all. Investigators have been so free that 
many of them in official positions have not in- 
frequently expressed conclusions quite at vari- 
ance with those of their chiefs concerning his- 
torical points bearing upon the controversies 
between Church and State. During a stay of 
one year in Paris the writer saw, in the National 
Library, in the National Archives, and even in 
the Archives of the Ministry of Foreign AflFairs, 
the bitter opponents of the Republic treated in 
every way like other investigators. Under this 
regime, as under the preceding, historians have 
enjoyed much consideration, and several of 
them have been placed at the head of important 
ministries. In the Ministry of Public Instruc- 

124 



HISTORY AND SCIENCE 125 

tion there has been a considerable enlargement 
of organisations to further the cause of history. 
The historical commission of that ministry con- 
tinues its rich collection of documents. The 
government helps particular historians, either 
by furnishing the assistance needed for special 
work, or by publishing their books through the 
National Printing Press, or in some other man- 
ner. Numerous historical chairs have been 
founded. At times cities have joined with the 
government in this work; the city of Paris has 
founded several chairs of history. Important 
fellowships in history have been established.^ 

There has never been such unanimity upon 
the importance of working from sources. A 
noble emulation has arisen in the publication of 
documents by the government, by the acade- 
mies, by cities, and by historical societies that 
are now to be counted by the hundred. For 
one of these that existed under the Empire 
there are now ten. They have accumulated 
material upon a colossal scale for the subjects 
to which they are devoted. French historians 
have never before been so extensively associated, 
either as corporate or as corresponding mem- 
bers, with foreign historical societies. Govern- 
ment help was never given more generously 

* Bourses de licence (Thistoire. 



126 FRANCE UNDER THE REPUBLIC 

than now. The Pariiament voted $100,000 
for the excavations at Delphi, so admirably 
carried on by M. Homolle.^ In other parts 
of Greece, in Asia,^ and in North Africa ex- 
tensive works of a kindred nature have com- 
pelled unknown history to yield some of her 
secrets. Similarly in different parts of France, 
and under various auspices, traces have been 
sought of prehistoric life, and remains of the 
buried cities of Gaul have been uncovered. 
Cartailhac, de Mortillet, and S. Reinach have, 
by their labours, recast our ethnological con- 
ceptions of the French people and given a fur- 
ther and more real retrospect to French his- 
tory.^ 

Not only have mediaeval, modern, and con- 
temporary history been studied in all their 
phases, but French historians have shown great 
interest in Celtic, Egyptian,^ Assyrian, Baby- 
lonian, Persian, Arabic, and Indian studies,^ 
not to speak of others which show more and 
more that the field of history is the world. In 
addition to the historical schools of France in 
Rome,^ in Athens, and in Cairo, as well as the 

^ Collignon, Max, in La Science jrariQaise, vol. II, p. 48. 
2 Ihid., p. 41. » lUd., p. 65. 

*See admirable report of what France has done in Egyptology, by 
Professor G. Maspero, La Science frangaise, vol. II, p. 5. 

* Sylvaln, Levy, "L'Indianisme," La Science frangaisey vol.11, p. 125. 

* Durand, Rene, "La philologie latine," ihid.t p. 167. 



HISTORY AND SCIENCE 127 

institutional efforts made in North Africa, a 
French School of the Far East has been started 
in Indo-China^ Wherever the French flag has 
been planted the claims of history have not 
been overlooked. 

A great movement of historical activity has 
been directed toward modern Italy, her art, 
her literature, and her history, which still have 
such a strange fascination for Frenchmen.^ 
Hispanic studies have also vastly increased.^ 
Great Britain, the country which has exerted 
the deepest possible influence upon French life 
from the first quarter of the eighteenth cen- 
tury to the present time, has never called forth 
more efforts on the part of students. There 
are the masterly works of J. Jusserand, whose 
superior grasp of English literature was recog- 
nised by Taine,^ the great book of Angelier on 
Robert Burns, Yves Guyot's studies of Eng- 
land, Bardoux's Ruskin, and among works of 
great worth Legouis's Chaucer »^ It is only after 
reading Charles Andler's thorough analysis of 
Germanic studies that one can, at all, have a 

^ Chavannes, Ed., "La Sinologie," ibid., p. 137. 

2 Hauvette, Henri, Les Etudes italiennes, in La Science franqaise, 
vol. II, p. 251. 

2 Martinenche, Ernest, Les Etudes hispaniques, ibid., p. 261. 

* H. Taine, sa vie et sa correspondance, vol. IV, p. 310. 

' Legouis, Emile, Les Etudes anglaises. La Science frangaise, vol. II» 
p. 275. 



128 FRANCE UNDER THE REPUBLIC 

fair idea of the many-sided grasp of the thought, 
history, and Hfe of Germany by Frenchmen.^ 

Never has the country been more fertile in 
historians of a high order. Renan, Taine, La- 
visse, Gabriel Monod, Sorel, Hanotaux, Ram- 
baud, and Anatole Leroy-Beaulieu are not only 
masters in various ways, but Lavisse and 
Monod remain great historical teachers. Ga- 
briel Monod not only founded the Revue his- 
torique and organised the Societe historique, but 
trained a goodly number of distinguished pu- 
pils, like him inspired by the purest scientific 
spirit and a strict sense of loyalty to facts. 
Most of them follow at any cost the objective 
method. 

The chief end of history for reputable French 
historians is truth and truth only. Some of 
them seem indifferent to national prejudices, 
and have stated, with the resoluteness of proph- 
ets, facts which were offensive to national pride. 
SoreP and Lavisse have been conspicuous in 
this respect. The thoroughness, the synthetic 
character, and the scientific objectivity of 
French history are more and more evident. 
One of the striking features of this French 
activity is the small army of searchers who are 

^ Andler, Charles, Les Etudes germaniques, ibid,, p. 285. 
* See, for a signal example of this, Sorel, Eistoire de la guerre franco- 
allemande, Paris, 1875. 



HISTORY AND SCIENCE 129 

everywhere exploring the past of men and things 
with a common purpose of increasing human 
knowledge. The Republic has, with freedom, 
furnished the tools for this great collective in- 
quiry, rewarded those who have sketched its 
results in the best manner, and helped not a 
little the popularisation of historical works. 

History has never before had such a large 
place in the primary and secondary schools and 
in the universities. The manuals of historical 
teaching have been so improved that the text- 
books of the Empire and those used now do 
not seem to be by or for the same people. 
French libraries give proportionally a larger 
place to history than those of America, and the 
relative number of historical works read is also 
greater. Of course, there are still men who 
write history in the interest of peculiar cliques; 
but the genuine historical spirit has so pene- 
trated into the nation's life, that one finds its 
beneficent influence in ecclesiastical historiog- 
raphy and in hagiographic literature, domains 
where formerly it was signally wanting. 

Outside of the almost endless bibliography of 
historical works published under the Repubhc, 
one may have an idea of the place which history 
has taken in the national life from the fact 
that there are few reviews of a general character 



130 FRANCE UNDER THE REPUBLIC 

which do not give to it an important place. 
The Revue des Deux Mondes has pubhshed in 
its pages many of the most important historical 
works which have appeared during the last 
half century. One may draw the same con- 
clusion from the new historical reviews — taking 
the term historical in the largest sense possible. 
Among others we have Romania, founded in 
1871; Bulletin de la societe des anciens textes, in 
1875; La Revue historique, 1876; Le Bulletin de 
correspondance hellenique, Revue de philologie, de 
litter ature et d'histoire ancienne, 1877; Revue 
epigraphique, 1878; Revue de Vhistoire des re- 
ligions, 1880; Revue egyptologique. Revue des 
etudes juives, Revue de la Revolution frangaise, 
1881; Repertoire des travaux historiques, Revue 
de la Revolution, 1883; Revue d' assyriologie et 
d' archeologie orientale, 1886; Revue des traditions 
populaires. Revue des etudes grecques, 1888; Revue 
historique et heraldique. Revue d'histoire diplo- 
matique, 1893; Revue d'histoire litteraire, Revue 
hispanique, 1894; Gazette numismatique fran- 
gaise. Revue de Fart ancien et moderne, 1897; 
Revue des etudes anciennes, Revue d'histoire mo- 
derne et contemporaine, Bulletin hispanique, 1899; 
Revue de Synthese historique, 1900; Revue germa- 
nique, 1905, and Revue du XV P siecle. Revue du 
XVI IP siecle, 1913. In this new vogue of his- 



HISTORY AND SCIENCE 131 

tory, as in the other manifestations of the na- 
tional hfe which we have studied, the increased 
prestige and influence of science is seen. 

The pride of repubhcans soars high when 
they speak of the scientific achievements of 
Frenchmen. They cannot but draw a very 
striking contrast between the scientific equip- 
ment of France under the Empire and that of 
to-day. Pasteur speaks of the place where the 
great French physiologist, Claude Bernard, 
worked, as a laboratory "half cellar, half tomb,"^ 
the " hovel, "^ "a damp and low cellar."^ His 
own was for a long time but an attic, and one of 
scanty proportions, which would excite the con- 
tempt of teachers of chemistry in our humblest 
high school. Even later on, his laboratory in 
the Ecole normale superieure consisted of only 
two small rooms. This great scientist waxes 
eloquent when he sees the superb laboratories 
of the Sorbonne opened twenty-five years ago. 
In a moment of grateful enthusiasm he ex- 
claims: "Everything from the schools of the 
villages to the laboratories of advanced science 
has been either founded or renovated."^ The 
same movement has been continued since his 
death. Laboratories of all kinds have been 

^ Vallery-Radot, La vie de Pasteur, 1900, p. 216. 

« Ibid., p. 661, » Ibid., p. 667. * Ibid., p. 656, 



132 FRANCE UNDER THE REPUBLIC 

established. The Faculty of Sciences has 20 at 
the Sorbonne, and 24 scattered in Paris, all 
devoted to teaching and to research.^ There 
are 10 in the Faculty of Medicine, 28 at the 
Practical School of High Studies,^ 20 at the 
College de France, 7 at the National Agronomic 
Institute, not to speak of those located in differ- 
ent parts of the land. There are some also in 
the colonies. The Pasteur Institute is but an 
immense laboratory studying bacteriology, par- 
asitology, biological chemistry, physiology, and 
experimental medicine. There are those of 
zoology, with stations at Roscoff in Brittany, 
at Boulogne, Villefranche, Marseilles, and Cette. 
There are also those of vegetal biology at Fon- 
tainebleau, and of geology at Lille. It was of 
the creation of most of these laboratories that 
Pasteur spoke, when he referred to what had 
been "founded and renovated." 

We are far from the time when he laments the 
fact that Napoleon can find millions to build 
the Opera, but cannot find "'between twelve 
and twenty thousand dollars" to equip a lab- 
oratory.^ There was not then in the budget of 
the Ministry of Public Instruction one penny 
devoted to the physical sciences by means of 

» Livrei de VStudiant, 1908-1909, p. 43. » Ihid.^ p. 79. 

• Vallery-Radot, op. dt., p. 215. 



HISTORY AND SCIENCE 133 

laboratories.* The laboratory idea has also been 
extended to subjects which formerly seemed out 
of its scope, experimental psychology, for in- 
stance. Recently a congress of French teachers 
asked that these psychological laboratories be 
introduced into all the normal schools for the 
future teachers of common education. One 
may say that the laboratory method has been 
generalised. 

Other instruments also of scientific progress 
have been created. Important astronomical 
observatories were erected at Algiers, Besangon, 
Bordeaux, Lyons, not to speak of those estab- 
lished at Mendon, upon Mont Blanc, at the 
Pic-du-Midi, on the Puy-de-D6me, and in Nice. 
Some of them have exceptional equipments. 

A separation took place between the astro- 
nomical and meteorological work, which has 
brought about the creation of the Bureau cen- 
tral de meteorologie, a weather bureau that has 
rendered vast services. While working with 
unity of purpose at home, French astronomers, 
by various organisations and congresses, have 
sought to secure international efficiency. They 
held a great international congress in 1887 for 
the photography of the heavens. They had 
previously organised the International Com- 

1 Ibid., p. 216. 



134 FRANCE UNDER THE REPUBLIC 

mittee of Weights and Measures, which led to 
the establishment, at Sevres, of the Interna- 
tional Bureau of Weights and Measures. As 
the metric standard rests upon an astronomical 
basis, it was fitting that astronomers should 
endeavour to perfect the system and solve fur- 
ther problems. The International Conference 
of Time^ resulted also in the creation of the 
International Bureau of Time at the Paris 
Observatory. Until resources are provided by 
the countries interested, the Bureau, at the 
expense of the government, sends twice a day 
time signals from the Observatory to the Eiffel 
Tower, whence they radiate in every direc- 
tion. All the foreign members of the Interna- 
tional Conference intrusted France with the 
task of giving the time by wireless to the 
world.^ Her astronomers have been untiring in 
working for the progress of celestial mechanics, 
geodesy, astrophysics, and astrophotography. 
It is almost impossible to count their missions 
sent to all parts of the world for special inqui- 
ries, eclipses, the transit of Venus, or for the 
tremendous task of measuring the equatorial 
arc of Peru. Perhaps her best contributions 
have been her eminent astronomers, Le Verrier, 

^ Confirence Internationale de VHeure. 
* La Science frangaise, vol. I, p. 121. 



HISTORY AND SCIENCE 135 

Tisserand, and Henri Poincare. The latter even 
dared to grapple with the problem of the sta- 
bility of our solar system in the vast universe, 
and to place upon a solid foundation what 
before him had been largely conjectural. Pro- 
fessor Louis T. Moore speaks of him as **^the 
successor of Laplace,"^ Professor Rados, of Buda- 
pest, calls him "the most powerful investigator 
in the domain of mathematics and mathematical 
physics" at that time.^ Professor Royce, of 
Harvard, speaks of him as "a leader of his age."^ 
"There is not a man living competent to ap- 
praise all his works," says Professor F. R. 
Moulton, of the University of Chicago.^ Again, 
speaking of Les methodes nouvelles, he says: "I 
shall leave the discussion of the processes em- 
ployed by Poincare with the remark that in 
power and elegance they are as much beyond 
those of Laplace as his were beyond the geome- 
try of Newton."^ He probably would never have 
accomplished so much had it not been for the 
quickening which he received from the institu- 
tions with which he was connected and the 
scientific activity whereby he was surrounded. 
That is evident when one reads his addresses 

1 The Nation, vol. 95, p. 242. 

' Poincare, H., The Value of Science, American translation, p. 1. 

' Poincare, H., Science and Hypothesis, Introduction, p. xxxi. 

* Popular Astronomy, vol. XX, p. 624. * Ibid., p. 626. 



136 FRANCE UNDER THE REPUBLIC 

in Savants et ecrivains. That book and Paul 
Appell's survey of modern mathematics^ reveal 
to us a remarkable activity. Those who have 
considered mathematics as a closed science, 
something like the dead languages, will be struck 
with the amount of vital energy displayed in 
this domain. 

In the land of the great physicists, Pascal, 
Descartes, Laplace, Arago, Fresnel, and Ampere, 
physics have been pushed forward with great 
energy. Doubtless the increasingly utilitarian 
importance of this science has contributed to 
its progress. Its whole scope has been changed 
under the Republic. Formerly it was considered 
as absolutely separate from chemistry, but a 
group of French scientists have built an inde- 
structible bridge between them. Berthelot was 
a leader in this. His ambition was to create what 
he called chemical mechanics, a term which is 
the subject of one of his most important books. 

Apart from progressive work in thermody- 
namics and optics, prominence has been given 
to electricity and its applications, the new gases 
of the atmosphere, and the radioactive sub- 
stances. At the International Congress of 
Electricians in Paris, when names were given to 
electric units, it was decided that two of them 

* La Science frangaise, vol. I, p. 78. 



HISTORY AND SCIENCE 137 

would be the names of Frenchmen who had 
rendered conspicuous services, Coulomb and 
Ampere. The three others, Volta, Faraday, and 
Ohm, represented Italy, England, and Germany. 
French electricians were foremost in defining 
and fixing electric standards. Marcel Deprez 
was first in transmitting electric energy over 
distances. Mme. Curie discovered polonium 
and then radium. She thereby wrought most 
profound changes in some of our fundamental 
conceptions of the physical sciences. She prac- 
tically opened the whole field of radiography, in 
which she now directs the researches of an elite 
of young scientists. Henri Becquerelle, the 
third scientist of the name, has also won great 
repute by his general work, but especially by 
his discovery of radioactivity in uranium. Lipp- 
mann, known by his colleagues for his studies 
of electrocapillarity, stands before the pubKc as 
a great scientist who, by applying strictly his 
optical principles, succeeded in making real col- 
oured photographs. French physicists were kept 
in touch with one another by a large number of 
societies, but above all by the Societe frangaise 
de physique. Apart from many ties with foreign 
workers, they organised the International Scien- 
tific Congress of Physics which met in Paris in 
1900. This congress so impressed French physi- 



138 FRANCE UNDER THE REPUBLIC 

cists that they have since endeavoured to con- 
tinue its work.^ 

Let Doctor Harvey M. Wiley, of the Depart- 
ment of Agriculture at Washington, give us his 
estimate of French work in a realm in which he 
has a recognised eminence. " One naturally turns 
to Berthelot in speaking of French chemists of 
modern times. Since the death of Chevreul he 
has been facile princeps among French chemists. 
Berthelot's activity in all branches of chemical 
science distinguishes him among chemists, who 
usually are masters only in some one department 
of science. Berthelot was a master in all. . . . 
Almost as eminent as Berthelot was that great 
worker, Moissan, whose untimely death lost to 
French chemistry one of its most brilliant rep- 
resentatives. His work, of course, was chiefly 
inorganic chemistry, and his synthetic prepara- 
tion of the precious stones under the influence of 
the electric furnace is a distinct step forward in 
the progress of chemistry. ' ' ^ " Before Moissan," 
says Doctor Edward Renouf, of Johns Hop- 
kins, "the study of chemical reactions had been 
confined to temperatures between 50 degrees 
below and 1,200 degrees above zero centigrade. 
Moissan invented the electric furnace ... in 



* Bouty, E., La Science frangaise^ vol. I, p. 131. 
2 Letter, Feb. 16, 1910. 



HISTORY AND SCIENCE 139 

which 3,000 degrees centigrade are attainable, 
temperatures comparable with that of the sun. 
His studies of chemical reactions at high tem- 
peratures opened up a new field for chemical re- 
search, and are especially valuable to astronomy 
by indicating the probable chemical reactions 
and conditions of matter in the sun and in the 
stars, and to geology by showing the complex 
changes in the composition of matter which 
must have occurred in the gradual cooling of the 
earth. Moissan was also one of the first chem- 
ists to utilise liquid air as a refrigerant, in the 
study of chemical reactions at extremely low 
temperatures, and devised ingenious apparatus 
for his purpose,"^ 

In the "brilliant array" of French chemists 
we must not fail to mention M. and Mme. 
Curie. "It is a rare combination," says again 
Doctor Wiley, "to see husband and wife equally 
eminent in the most difficult and recondite 
branches of chemical investigations. The world 
was shocked by the accidental death of M. 
Curie, but it has been no less surprised at the 
brilliant work of Mme. Curie since her hus- 
band's death. It is not because of a feeling of 
gallantry, but of real accomplishment, that the 
chemical world bows before Mme. Curie. . . . 

» Letter. Sept., 1909. 



140 FRANCE UNDER THE REPUBLIC 

The examples I have mentioned are only types 
of brilliant and magnificent work of French 
chemists during the past third of a century. 
The Republic, since its establishment on the 
fourth of September, 1870, may feel proud of 
what has been accomplished in chemical science. 
Adolph Wurtz, one of the most brilliant of 
French chemists of modern times, declared that 
chemistry is a French science, founded by 
Lavoissier, of immortal memory. The French 
chemists of the Republic have well illustrated 
the fact that chemistry is also a continuing 
French science. "V 

Pasteur did a large amount of work as a 
chemist for which he never received any credit; 
but he is accounted everywhere one of the 
greatest figures of the scientific world. He 
effectively opened the new world of invisible 
life, opened the way for Lister's great antiseptic 
work, practically saved French sericulture, found 
a scientific way to exterminate anthrax, and 
finally made his last great discovery of anti- 
rabies vaccine. The frequency of hydrophobia 
in Europe gave a greater significance to his 
cure for one of the most dreaded of diseases. 
His contribution to science does not consist 
in this or that particular discovery, but in the 

1 Dr. H. M. Wiley, ibid. 




MARIE F. S. CARNOT 



HISTORY AND SCIENCE 141 

fundamental new principles which he introduced 
into medicine, surgery, hygiene, and the sciences 
of life. There is not a civilised country where 
natural sciences have not been affected by the 
principles which he discovered. He gave France 
the example of an eminent scientist ready to fight 
courageously for the rights of science against 
theologians, while opposing scientists when they 
exceeded the proper limits of their realm. He 
had the courage in the French Academy to 
assert that, beyond the visible, he had seen 
what to him was evidence of the supernatural, 
for which the world had found personal sym- 
bols, whether they were a Buddha or a Jesus. 

Several men were directly inspired by the 
teachings of Pasteur. There is Roux producing 
the anti-diphtheric vaccine, and Calmette his 
anti-venomous serum against the bite of veno- 
mous animals. We might add to these names 
those of Duclaux, Metchnikoff, Yersin, and 
others.^ It looks as if there was no phase of 
bacteriology upon which these savants had not 
thrown some light or increased our knowledge 
of it. Professor B. Renault observed in coal 
minute organisms belonging to the Bacteriaceae.^ 
Other scientists have discovered a number of 

* Vallery-Radot, op. cit., pp. 673 et seq. 

' Zeiller, R., La Science frangaise, vol. I, p. 272. 



142 FRANCE UNDER THE REPUBLIC 

bacteria and other agents of diseases.^ Professor 
A. Laveran was so fortunate as to isolate one of 
the organisms which produce malaria.^ 

Among zoologists J. H. Fabre has astonished 
the world by his remarkable studies of the 
habits of insects. Armand Sabatier, enlarging 
upon his conclusions as a naturalist, and lift- 
ing them up to a high philosophical plane, has 
discussed with great originality some of the 
most fundamental problems of human exis- 
tence.^ The continuance of that existence is one 
of the great ends of scientific inquiries. We 
cannot, therefore, overlook the new way which 
a Frenchman, Doctor Carrel, of the Rockefeller 
Institute, has opened for experimental physiol- 
ogy. His wonderful experiments with grafts of 
flesh, the survival of cells and the culture of 
tissues^ have awakened expectations of greater 
things. 

France, whose Bernard Palissy as early as the 
sixteenth century had already a fair apprehension 
of the formation of our globe, has kept an ex- 
traordinary interest in its problems. A large 
corps of geologists have thoroughly worked the 
home field, hand in hand with paleontologists 

1 Roger, H., ibid., p. 363. ^ Roger, H., ibid., p. 364. 

' See Essai sur la vie ct la mort, 1892; Essai sur V immortalite au point 
de vue du naturalisme ivolutioniste, 1895; Philosophie de V effort, 1903. 
* Roger, H., La Science frangai$e, vol. I, p. 344. 



HISTORY AND SCIENCE 143 

and the geographers. As a whole, no country 
has been better searched by its geologists than 
France. They have also studied different parts 
of the world, America and Asia, but especially 
French colonies, North Africa, the Sahara, 
Dahomey, Madagascar, and Indo-China. In 
reading the records one is amazed that so much 
should already have been accomplished in diffi- 
cult circumstances. "Lapparent," wrote Doctor 
Rice, of Wesleyan University, a few years ago, 
"stands in the first rank among all-round geolo- 
gists. The late German paleontologist, von 
Zittel, told him that Lapparent's Geologie was 
the best book on geology in existence." A more 
important work ^ is the Traite de Geologie of M. 
Emile Haug, professor at the Sorbonne. Fouque 
and Michel-Levy have taken foremost places in 
the comparatively new department of micro- 
scopic petrography. They have made a syn- 
thesis of almost all volcanic rocks. Some of 
their colleagues have endeavoured to make min- 
erals purer than those of nature so as to grasp 
more fully their chemical composition.^ Ver- 
neuil has rendered possible the industry of ar- 
tificial rubies, sapphires, and spinels.^ Often the 
geologists work with the paleontologists, and 

^ De Margerie, E., La Science frangaise, vol. I, p. 246. 

* Lacroix, A., La Science frangaise, vol. I, p. 178. 

• Lacroix, A., ibid., p. 177. 



144 FRANCE UNDER THE REPUBLIC 

we have a man like Gaudry whose philosophical 
culture enables him to draw valuable cosmo- 
logical deductions from his studies.^ Some one 
has called him "the founder of historical and 
philosophical paleontology.''^ He unquestion- 
ably furnished sound philosophical conclusions 
from our contemporary knowledge of the testi- 
monies of the earth. 

Geological studies in France led to discov- 
eries of human paleontology, that is, of fossil 
man. In searching the caves and excavations 
in certain districts the most important speci- 
mens that we possess were found. The problems 
that these savants try to solve are so important 
that many men are now digging for new remains 
of the distant past. With these scientists one 
finds a legion of students of pre-history, studying 
the work of primitive man, and pre-historical 
archeology gives a learned setting to these re- 
mains of our distant ancestors.^ For these rea- 
sons anthropology and ethnology have come to 
take, in almost all studies, an importance which 
would have been impossible under Napoleon 
III. Broca did most of his work under the Re- 

* See Enchainements du monde animal dans les temps gSologiques, 
1878-1883; Essai de paleontologie pkilosophique. 

2 Boule, M., La Science frangaise, vol. I, p. 301. 

' To have an idea of what is done in this domain, the number of in- 
vestigators at work, and their success, see Max Collignon's report in 
La Science frangaise, vol. II, pp. 64-69. 



HISTORY AND SCIENCE 145 

public. Then we have Topinard, de Quatre- 
fages, and Hamy, who have won laurels in this 
singularly interesting field in which we must 
place Fouillee, not as a speciahst, but as one 
who has subjected the conclusions of anthropolo- 
gists and ethnologists to the severest philosoph- 
ical tests. Medicine and surgery in France, as 
compared with other countries, may not have 
the place of unique distinction which they had 
forty years ago; but competent Americans as- 
sert that these two sciences — in so far as they 
are sciences — have made enormous progress 
there. 

We have already referred to those new scien- 
tific societies and their varied annual publica- 
tions which are increasingly specialised with the 
tendency to turn results of science into practical 
channels. There has also been the issuing of 
those periodicals which give yearly surveys of 
the whole field of one or of several sciences, 
such as the Annee biologique, the Annee psycho- 
logique, the Annee sociologique, the Annuaire de 
la societe (Tethnographie, the Annuaire geologique 
universel, which are as invaluable for specialists 
as for the man of the world who wishes to be 
acquainted with the work done in these do- 
mains. There are important works, like Wurtz's 
Dictionnaire de chimie, 11 volumes; Fremy's 



146 FRANCE UNDER THE REPUBLIC 

Encyclopedie chimique, 92 volumes; Richet's Die- 
tionnaire de physiologie, 9 volumes; the Die- 
tionnaire encyclopedique des sciences medicales, 
100 volumes, and other great collective works, 
most useful tools for scientific students. Of 299 
periodical publications devoted to the subject of 
health, that is, medicine, surgery, and hygiene, 
225 were started under the Republic. Of the 
25 publications on medical sciences mentioned 
by Dr. Henri Roger in his bibliography, 22 were 
first issued during the same period.^ Of the 19 
papers on metallurgy, 10 are of recent creation, 
and of the 84 general scientific papers, 56 were 
launched during the last forty years.^ 

In every part of the country private individu- 
als have pursued scientific studies on their own 
account, while French travellers, missionaries, 
and oflScers in the colonies have rendered mani- 
fest services by their observations and discover- 
ies. There has been kindled a spirit of scientific 
apostleship, which has found expression in many 
ways, but especially in the organisation of socie- 
ties and clubs with scientific ends in view. Of 
the 64 learned societies in Paris mentioned by 
Minerva with the date of their foundation, 29 
were started before the Republic and 35 after. 

^ La Science frangaise, vol. I, p. 373. 

* Annuaire de la presse frangaise et Hranghe, 1909. 



HISTORY AND SCIENCE 147 

Of course, these are only a few out of the total 
number of such Parisian societies. The pro- 
portion of learned associations formed in other 
parts of the country is as encouraging, while the 
development of the scientific spirit has been 
constant. Any one who compares the pro- 
gramme of the Congres scientifique of Chartres, 
in September, 1869,^ with the last session of the 
Association frangaise pour Vavancement des sci- 
ences will be struck by the change which has 
taken place. The topics of religious archeol- 
ogy, of ecclesiastical history, and of Church 
interests, which were formerly dominant, have 
yielded their places to the discussion of the 
vital problems of our age. This association has 
done much for "the progress and diffusion of 
the sciences." 

A State institution, the Caisse des recherches 
scientifiques, was founded by the Ministry of 
Public Instruction in 1900 to accumulate funds 
to further scientific activity. This organisation 
is likely, in course of time, to have a large in- 
come at its disposal. The French Institute grants 
every three years the prize of $20,000, known 
as Prix Osiris, to the Frenchman who has sig- 
nally contributed to the progress of science, or 

* Lasteyrie, Bibliograpkie des travaux kistoriques ei archSologiques, 
vol. I. 



148 FRANCE UNDER THE REPUBLIC 

produced the most useful work, not to speak of 
Osiris's royal gift of $5,000,000 to the Pasteur 
Institute. M. Albert Kahn, a most generous 
benefactor of French education in the past, 
pledged $6,000 a year, for five years, to the 
purpose of inviting foreign scientists of note to 
go to Paris as lecturers, or for Frenchmen to 
go to other countries for the purpose of ex- 
pounding their own discoveries. 

Les Amis du Museum give their sympathy 
and support to that institution, as other friends 
do with scientific establishments in other parts 
of the country. The Academy of Sciences, that 
of Medicine, and that of Moral and Pohtical 
Sciences have numerous rewards in their keep- 
ing for scientific workers. Furthermore, these 
bodies enjoy, on the part of the most refined 
citizens and of those in power, a consideration 
which was singularly wanting under the last 
Empire. They have free speech now. All bod- 
ies representing science have contributed to 
promote more and more a sense of the kinship 
of all forms of knowledge, of the unity of all 
truths and of all sciences. The mathematical, 
the physical, the historical, the sociological, and 
the psychological sciences are all intrinsic parts 
of the same great field of science and are all 
interdependent. Everywhere we find among 



HISTORY AND SCIENCE 149 

scientific workers the idea that, whatever one's 
legitimate theories and hypotheses may be, 
these must ultimately rest upon observation and 
experiment. 

By the side of this empiricism there is also 
found an idealism which leads these workers to 
the conviction that, whatever be the utilitarian 
value of this great collective labour for mate- 
rial or for moral ends, science should be studied 
for its own sake. In forming a moral estimate 
of France one should not forget this scientific 
idealism, which is an important asset in ethical 
reckonings, nor the general faith in the benefi- 
cence of knowledge. Along with this has come 
a national feeling of gratitude to scientists of 
the past. Buff on, Laplace, Lavoisier, Cuvier, 
Claude Bernard, Bichat, Berthelot, Henri Poin- 
care are idealised and revered. Lamarck and 
other forgotten scientific workers, who toiled for 
truth without recognition in their day, have 
now their statues or other memorials. Laennec 
has his monument, a hospital bears his name, 
and Pasteur, cherished by the people, has be- 
come enshrined in his institute. France looks 
now at her illustrious scientists as once she 
viewed her saints; all have been forces of ethical 
uplift. 

It is greatly to the credit of French scientists 



150 FRANCE UNDER THE REPUBLIC 

that they should have so intimately co-ordinated 
themselves with those of the whole world. For 
them science ignores frontiers, and the best 
attitude is that which is ever ready to assimilate 
new knowledge, whatever be its source. Foreign 
countries have honoured them. In 1890 Henri 
Poincare, at the Universal Congress of Mathe- 
matics in Stockholm, was awarded the Medal 
of Honour. M. and Mme. Curie, Henri Bec- 
querel, Moissan, Laveran, Lippmann, Richet, 
Carrel, and MetchnikoflF — the latter a Russian 
who has become thoroughly French — have 
received Nobel prizes. At the seventh In- 
ternational Zoological Congress, in Boston, 
August, 1909, the Czar Nicholas Prize was 
awarded to Professor L. Cuenot of Paris for his 
work on heredity. Foreign governments and 
universities have given similar and flattering re- 
cognition. Highly cultivated at home, French 
science radiates abroad. It is no longer the tol- 
erated, neglected, and suspected study of four 
decades ago, coming in the scheme of education 
after the languages, with its spectacular experi- 
ments as mere shows for the students; science 
now is preponderant. It is fundamental in edu- 
cation and in other important realms of life. 
It is a power with which theology and philos- 
ophy must reckon. It has come to be written 



HISTORY AND SCIENCE 151 

with a large S. For many, science is now a 
kind of religion. It is the great, noisy idol of 
republicans with its enthusiastic devotees and 
even with its fanatics; a benejficent idol, how- 
ever, freeing the land from ignorance, from 
superstitions, from needless terrors, and putting 
new energy into every organ of the nation's life. 



CHAPTER VII 

SOCIAL REFORM AND PHILAN- 
THROPY 

IN the domain of social improvement and 
philanthropy the national energy has also 
displayed itself. The men in power have 
rendered their best services in this realm by 
showing an untiring solicitude for those who 
contribute so potently to the creation of wealth, 
the labouring classes. A very important de- 
parture, under the Republic, has been the 
creation of a Superior Council of Labour in 
connection with the Ministry of Commerce — a 
council which furnishes the Parliament with 
trustworthy data and reliable statistics on labour 
and on needed legislation. The establishment 
of a labour exchange in Paris, subsequently 
aided with a grant of $600,000, and the founda- 
tion of 144 other exchanges^ in large cities, 
indicate a real concern for the welfare of the 
masses. Clemenceau went further. He founded 
a Ministry of Labour, marking, thereby, a new 
era in the history of French institutions. 

^Annuaire statistique, 1913, 
152 



SOCIAL REFORM 153 

The government has favoured the formation of 
labour-unions of all kinds, and under conditions 
more beneficial for toilers. These have not in- 
frequently' been abusive when in trades-unions, 
cruel in strikes, and criminal in the senseless de- 
struction of property; but as a whole the labour 
movement has meant greater independence, a 
clearer consciousness of the rights of the labourer 
and a certain education resulting from his desire 
to co-ordinate himself properly with his eco- 
nomic environment. His employers are no 
longer the baronial lords of the Second Empire, 
who acted as if they owned his soul. He is no 
more haunted by the fear of losing his position 
because of his vote or his Church. 

Now he has a larger wage, works fewer days 
and fewer hours. The character of his work is 
less unpleasant. Shops and factories have be- 
come cleaner, more cheerful, and pleasanter. 
What is true of the industrial world is true of 
commerce. In all stores women clerks are now 
provided with seats. In government work the 
State insists upon a minimum wage. All have 
more and purer food. They have summer 
vacations, and summer outings are coming 
gradually within their reach. Life for them has 
been greatly transformed in half a century. 

A fact which shows the improvement in their 



154 FRANCE UNDER THE REPUBLIC 

condition is that the legislation of the last forty 
years has been mostly in their favour. The Par- 
liament has passed laws on liability of employ- 
ers in case of accidents, laws providing reliable 
inspectors for the security of the labourer in 
mines, inspectors of labour in general, laws to free 
workingmen from the livret, a book of identity 
placing the labourer at the mercy of his em- 
ployer, laws preventing a child from working in 
factories unless provided with a certificate from 
some doctor that the labour is not above his 
strength, laws instituting juvenile courts, laws 
limiting the time of women's and children's 
labour as well as of labour in general, laws pro- 
moting arbitration between employers and em- 
ployees, laws and appropriations to help the 
organisation of mutual-benefit societies, to fur- 
ther the State system of annuities to labourers 
by the payment of an annual fee, and laws pro- 
viding for old-age pensions. One of the laws 
which was most violently combated by the op- 
position is that which accords to every French 
labourer the inalienable right to have one day 
of rest every week, and that on Sunday wherever 
it is practicable. 

There is scarcely any limit to the legal efforts 
made in this direction. M. Paul Deschanel did 
not exaggerate when, at a banquet in Paris in 



SOCIAL REFORM 155 

1909, he said: "The RepubHc has done more 
in thirty years for the workingman than the 
other regimes during several centuries."^ At 
the same time, changed conditions, as we show 
elsewhere,^ have brought an increase of wages 
and a lower cost of the necessities of life. 

One of the leading factors in this improvement 
has been the organisation of labour-unions, which 
had a precarious existence under the third Bona- 
parte, but in 1911 had 15,668 syndicats of dif- 
ferent kinds with at least 2,386,000 members.^ 
They exert an important moral and social in- 
fluence. In 1905, 961 of these unions had em- 
ployment bureaus; 1,059, libraries; 816, funds 
for mutual help; 690, funds for those without 
work, and 348 have professional schools or pro- 
fessional courses.^ The labourers of the country 
are put in touch with opportunities for work by 
means of numerous employment bureaus, by 
labour exchanges, by trades-unions, by municipal 
councils, by mutual-aid societies as well as by 
benevolent boards. 

The idea of profit-sharing is represented by 
such admirable institutions as that of Godin 
in Guise, and that of Boucicaut at the Bon- 
Marche in Paris; but while in 1870 there were 

^ Le Temps, Nov. 26, 1909. * See Chap. X, p. 209. 

* Annuaire statistique, 1913. 

^V Illustration, "Documents," Nov. 11, 1905. 



156 FRANCE UNDER THE REPUBLIC 

only 16 institutions practising it, in 1900 there 
were 120.^ The distributive co-operative socie- 
ties, only 39 in 1870, had in 1911 reached the 
number of 2,811, with sales approximating $30,- 
000,000.2 The savings-banks had issued 2,021,- 
228 bank-books with $107,500,000 in 1871, but 
in 1911 there were 14,400,000 bank-books with 
deposits amounting to $1,122,000,000. The 
Republic founded postal savings-banks and 
school savings-banks, which have done much to 
foster thrifty habits. A frequent reward in the 
common schools is a bank-book. Besides those 
founded by the government there are municipal 
and private savings-banks with a limited num- 
ber of depositors. There are also associations 
like La Fourmi (The Ant), founded in 1879, in 
which depositors are pledged to pay so much per 
week or per month. At the end of a certain 
time a division is made. Before 1900 this soci- 
ety had collected $5,400,000. 

Organisations to provide against the contin- 
gencies of life meet more and more with popu- 
lar patronage. The Second Empire gave some 
encouragement to mutual-aid societies. In 1871 
there were 5,787 of them with a membership of 
683,974 and a capital of $7,500,000, while in 

^ Catalogue qfftciel de V exposition universelle, 1900, vol. XVI. 
^ Gide, Charles, op. cit., p, 232. 



SOCIAL REFORM 157 

1910 there were 21,079 such societies, with a 
membership of 3,552,596 and a capital of 
$68,287,437.^ As these societies provide free 
medical service for their members, it was feared 
lest the law, which compels the town to give 
free medical care to the needy poor, would be 
fatal to mutual-aid societies; but these fears 
were groundless, and these organisations in- 
creased. As the number of patients helped by 
the towns was augmented, the members of the 
societies of mutual aid became more numerous. 
The town-helped patients, from 1895 to 1899, 
rose from 360,000 to 500,000, and the mem- 
bers of mutual-aid societies from 1,354,439 to 
1,759,000.2 School mutual-aid societies are of 
recent formation. In 1894 there were three in 
Paris and one in the country; in 1909 they had 
so multiplied that their membership reached 
800,000.2 M. Leopold Mabilleau, an enthusi- 
astic worker in this direction, sets at 21,000 all 
the mutual-aid societies and at about 5,000,000 
the number of mutualists of France.* 



^ Annuaire statisiique, 1913. 

' Haussonville, Comte d'. Revue des Deux Mondes, vol. 162, p. 792. 

* Le Siecle, Feb. 23, 1909. In these societies the pupils pay two 
cents a week. One is used to help sick members, and the other to 
provide an old-age pension in due time. The mutualites scolaires are 
followed by mutualites post-scolairest which interest the pupil until he 
may join an adult society. 

* Le Such, Feb. 1, 1909. 



158 FRANCE UNDER THE REPUBLIC 

The idea of old-age pensions has been more 
and more put into practice. The number of 
beneficiaries from the State have increased from 
130,103 in 1871 to 280,002 in 1911, and the sums 
paid, from $16,600,000 to $54,784,000.^ The 
government grants pensions to old soldiers, to 
aged public servants, to functionaries, and to 
teachers as well as to some seamen permanently 
liable to service in the navy. The State also 
compels miners to provide for old age by surren- 
dering 2 per cent of their wages. This is dupli- 
cated by the employer and also by the country. 
In 1907 the Chamber of Deputies voted an old- 
age pension for labourers, which has been lately 
ratified by the Senate. This law, largely in the 
hands of the municipal councils, provided for 
the pay in 1911 of a small pension of $36 a 
year to 577,816 individuals. In some cases a 
municipality may grant $0.20 a day, which in 
France means daily bread for a labourer.^ 

Public opinion has moved so rapidly in this 
direction that many corporations of their own 
accord have put the principles of this law into 
practice and provided old-age pensions for 
1,200,000 employees. The seven great railroad 
companies of France, in 1906, devoted $15,400,- 
000 to old-age pensions for their 200,000 ser- 

* Annuaire atatigtique, 1913. * Gide, Charles, op. ciU p. 452. 



SOCIAL REFORM 159 

vants.^ In 1906 these companies devoted to 
the social betterment of their employees sums 
equal to 21 per cent of their wages.* The Bank 
of France not only provides pensions and en- 
courages the mutual-aid societies of its em- 
ployees, but in 1908 it founded a Sodete de pre- 
voyance dotale, sl society to provide the children 
of employees with a dowry at the time of their 
marriage.^ The sum devoted by this institution 
to improve the condition of its personnel is 
$5,000,000 a year.^ Furthermore, the State has 
an organisation whereby any individual may 
secure an old-age annuity by the payment of 
annual fees. The number of individuals who 
avail themselves of this institution is not large. 
In 1898 only 29,245 persons made payments for 
themselves, while the total number of beneficia- 
ries was 235,184; that is, the greater part is 
paid by employers. The annuities paid that 
year amounted to $6,891,700. 

Insurance companies reimbursed that year 
$15,000,000 in their annuity service. Insurance 
companies have greater success with individuals 

iQuyot, Yves, Le Sikle, Dec. 15, 1908. 

* Gide, Charles, op. cit., p. 153. 
» La Revue, Jan. 1, 1909, p. 126. 

* In addition to salaries of the labourers, the iron works of Le Creusot 
adds 12 per cent, the Mame Printing Works of Tours 15.25 per cent, 
the cut-glass works of Baccarat 8 per cent, the coal mines of Anzin 11 
per cent. (Gide, op, cit, p. 154.) 



160 FRANCE UNDER THE REPUBLIC 

who subscribe on their own account; for, from 
1882 to 1898 their annuity service increased 300 
per cent. Life insurance has had a prodigious 
development. From 1870 to 1898 the pohcies 
rose from 10,162^ to 522,066, and the amounts 
insured from $28,300,000 to $781,000,000.^ This 
reaches not only the rich and the well-to-do, 
but also people of limited means. Well-con- 
ducted life insurance appeals more and more 
to labourers, and the possibility of making small 
and frequent payments has contributed to the 
increase in the number of policies. 

Rent-paying people are not so numerous as in 
many countries, for a majority of Frenchmen 
own their own homes, yet in some centres a 
large part of the poor population live in wretched 
quarters. The providing of healthy homes, a 
work taken up with apostolic zeal by M. Jules 
Siegfried, and now pushed forward by many 
building associations,^ will save workingmen 
from living in hovels where health as well as 
decency is impossible. The Alliance d'hygiene 
sociale and the Societe frangaise des habitations 
a bon marche have inspired many a poor work- 
man to make efforts to have a house of his own, 
or to have a building association erect it. There 

^ La Grande EncyclopSdie, vol. IV, *' Assurance." 
* Catalogue offidel, ibid. ' Ibid. 



SOCIAL REFORM 161 

is also the work of the SociSte anonyme de loge- 
ments economiques pour families nombreuses, pro- 
viding inexpensive apartments for famihes with 
numerous children.^ 

Along this line may be mentioned the work 
of the Mining and Railroad societies, which 
have built some 60,000 houses for their opera- 
tives. Some rent these homes at a very low 
rate. In Baccarat the labourers are housed gra- 
tuitously. In Le Creusot they pay from $1.60 
to $0.25 per month. ^ There is the princely gift 
of $2,000,000 from the Rothschilds to build 
large, comfortable, and inexpensive blocks of 
houses for the better class of artisans and clerks; 
the Hotel meuble, constructed by the Societe phi- 
lanthropique for single women ;^ the Logement 
pour dames des posies, telegraphes et telephones^ 
a home for the w^omen employed in post-offices;* 
and La Parisienne, a large home founded by 
the Comte d'llaussonville, in which 150 young 
women may live for $5 per month. 

The general problem as well as the specific 
one, of housing has been taken up all over the 
country. By the side of the poor are people 



^ No family of less than three children may be admitted. The society 
is pledged not to pay more than 3 per cent to its stockholders. Le 
Signal, Oct. 29, 1907. 

2 Gide, op. cit, p. 247. ' U Illustration, June 7, 1902. 

* Ihid., July 22, 1905. 



162 FRANCE UNDER THE REPUBLIC 

in humble circumstances, who are received in 
the maisons de retraite — a term which Miss 
Betham-Edwards has translated very appro- 
priately, "associated homes." There are homes 
in large seaports for sailors, so that, while 
ashore, they may be under good influence. We 
might speak of UAbri, "The Shelter," a society 
to help the worthy poor who through misfor- 
tune are unable to pay their rent. The object 
of this organisation is to stay eviction. Some 
290 agencies put within the reach of 15,000 
families small free gardens, where they may 
grow the vegetables they need.^ 

The matter of sanitation has been taken up 
with earnestness and determination. Strict laws 
have conferred adequate powers upon those who 
have special care of the hygiene of the country. 
Scientific methods of arresting contagious dis- 
eases are rapidly accepted by the masses. Cities 
have made great sacrifices to obtain pure water, 
and plenty of it. Narrow, unhealthy streets are 
replaced by improved ones. There has never 
been such a destruction of hovels as during the 
last forty years. Almost everywhere the ten- 
dency is to give more space to houses, some- 
times at the cost of fine, historic streets or of 
walls which are dismantled. The hygienist 

» Le SUcle, Nov. 9, 1909. 



SOCIAL REFORM 163 

scarcely stops before important monumental 
landmarks. 

The work against tuberculosis has been cre- 
ated by the Republic. Not to speak of institu- 
tions inland, in 1901 there were 24 sanitariums 
on the coasts.^ That of Hendaye, in the Pyr- 
enees is a model institution. By the side of 
other agencies to fight this evil, in 1908, UCEuvre 
de la tuberculose humaine gave 400,000 free con- 
sultations to tuberculous patients.* Through 
the new education the people have come to be- 
lieve in the power of microbes, and also in that 
of science. Saint-Hubert, formerly the only 
hope of those bitten by mad dogs, has been re- 
placed by the Pasteur Institute. The 2,671 
cases treated in 1886 had a death-rate of 0.94 
per cent, while in 1900 the 1,420 cases were fatal 
only to the extent of 0.28 per cent.^ The awful 
disease anthrax, so fatal to beasts and often to 
men, is rapidly diminishing through the Pasteur 
vaccination of cattle. 

Innumerable efforts have been made to save 
human hfe, laying stress upon the harrowing 
problem of infantile mortality. The recent 
Fondation Pierre Budin is a practical school for 
the care and treatment of babies. There, apart 

^ Conference of Charities, 1902, p. 228. 

» Le SiMe, Feb. 1. 1909. 

* U Illustration, "Documents," July 18, 1901. 



164 FRANCE UNDER THE REPUBLIC 

from the teaching of the mothers and the advice 
given to them in individual cases, the Kttle ones 
are weighed, examined periodically, and their 
diet is superintended. It is a noble attempt to 
popularise our best knowledge among those who 
hitherto have been led only by impulse and 
often merely by instinct. Laws enacted under 
the Republic protect babies from those mon- 
strous provincial nurses,^ who had earned the 
only too appropriate name of faiseuses (Tanges, 
*' angel-makers," because of the large death-rate 
of the infants committed to their charge. The 
Roussel Law prevents these women from going 
out until their own infants are at least seven 
months old. Dispensaries have become numer- 
ous, while relief at home has been greatly ex- 
tended. 

The total expense for hospitals, asylums, and 
homes for the aged has risen from $18,574,000 
in 18712 1-0 $48,233,400 in 1911.^ Aged people, 
the infirm, and the incurable are taken care of 
by the State. The Republic has co-ordinated 
the town, the department, and the State or- 
ganisations, and thereby has accelerated their 
action through the Assistance publique. The 
expenses of all local boards of charity, superin- 

* Brieux, in his Les Remplagantes, has laid bare the evil of the system. 
« Fernandez, op. cit., p. 354. » The Statesman s Year Book, 1907. 



SOCIAL REFORM 165 

tended by this national instrument, were $5,- 
200,000 in 1871 and $9,200,000 in 1907. In the 
hospitals and hospices, old people's homes, the 
patients have increased from 48,159 in 1871 to 
74,705 in 1911,^ and the expenses have risen 
from $16,400,000 to $33,600,000. The children 
in these institutions have increased from 95,444 
to 228,699 in 1911, and the expenses from 
$2,000,000 to $8,348,000.2 

Abbe Gayraud sets at 100,000 the number of 
the sick, the infirm, and the aged, and at 60,000 
the orphans in Roman Cathohc institutions.^ 
There are small independent organisations for 
particular cases such as the Association generale 
des Alsaciens and the Societe de protection des 
Alsaciens, which have spent more than $600,000 
each for this form of charity in twenty years.* 
There is La Maison Rossini for aged artists, 
and La Maison des comediens at Port-aux- 
Dames for aged actors. There are professional 
associations, providing orphanages for fatherless 
or motherless children of their organisations. 
There are institutions of this kind for artists' 
children, for the children of common-school 
teachers, for those of railroad employees, for 
those of Alsatians, for those of Freemasons, etc. 

* Annuaire statistique, 1913. " Ibid. 

* La Rej)ublique et la paix religieuae, p. 93. 

* Scheurer-Kestner, op. cit.> p. 278. 



166 FRANCE UNDER THE REPUBLIC 

Comte d'Haussonville sets at 1,400 the number 
of independent orphanages — the majority of 
them CathoHc — in the country.^ 

The increase in the number of institutions 
and the number of their inmates does not mean 
an increase of the needy, but that more of the 
needy are now helped who formerly were neg- 
lected. The Gavroche of Hugo would be a vir- 
tual impossibility now. Innumerable efforts are. 
made to protect infants at home, such as in- 
stitutions that furnish pure milk and those 
which take them away from cruel parents. The 
creches are doing good work, but they labour 
against the popular feeling that what the chil- 
dren need is not more institutions, but more 
mothers restored to them by better social con- 
ditions. The same thing might be said about 
the garderies of children in the schools where 
the little ones are kept under proper super- 
vision until the mothers return home from their 
work. In many of the schools cantines scolaires 
provide lunch for all at cost, and free for poor, 
underfed children ;2 and summer outings took, in 
1910, 72,400 children to the country .^ When pos- 
sible the rule is to scatter them in homes rather 

^ Revue des Deux Mondes, vol. CLXI, p. 787. 

« In 1904, the schools of Paris served 10,660,000 meals. (Gorst, Sir 
John E., The Children of the Nation.) 
3 VlUustration, October 29, 1910. 



SOCL\L REFORM 167 

than place them in large aggregations. The So- 
ciete pour la protection de Venfance ahandonnee et 
coupable has extended its kind ministrations to 
more than 10,000 children/ while religious organ- 
isations deserve much credit for kindred work. 
Public opinion has moved in the direction of 
greater kindness toward illegitimate children, 
formerly treated like moral pariahs, as if they 
were responsible for the sins of their parents. 
Laws also have been voted to secure greater 
justice for them in the matter of inheritance. 

As we have already seen, under the Republic 
the nation has strongly modified its attitude 
toward woman. As a girl, she has more educa- 
tion in the schools, more protection in the mill 
and in the street. Her status is as yet far from 
ideal, but the progress has been great. There 
are now works like the CEuvre pour la repression 
de la traite des blanches to fight organised prosti- 
tution; works to help young girls arriving in 
Paris, giving temporary help and sound advice; 
institutions to shelter them overnight; others, 
where the fallen may reform. Numerous or- 
ganisations provide an inexpensive meal for 
shop girls; and one of the organisations, the 
Refectoire, recently established, aims to furnish 
free meals to honest working girls without 

* La Revue, Jan. 1, 1909, p. 125, 



168 FRANCE UNDER THE REPUBLIC 

work. There are homes on the seashore for 
worn-out mothers. The mutualites maternelles, 
the labour exchanges for mothers, the Asile 
MidieleU the Comite du refuge pour femmes en- 
ceintes, the purpose of which is to reheve from 
hard work those who are about to become 
mothers, to free them from too exacting cares, 
or to enable them to gain strength before child- 
birth. The thought here is as much for the well- 
being of the expected offspring as for that of the 
mother. There is the Asile George Sand where, 
after their conJSnement, the mothers may be re- 
ceived with their children, and the Asile Ledru- 
Rollin when they have one child only. If they 
cannot support their child, it is received tem- 
porarily at the Asile Leo-Delibes or permanently 
elsewhere. The Fondation Carnot distributes an- 
nually sums of $40.00 each to worthy widows 
with children. They had 99 beneficiaries in 
1909. 

No less important than what is done for 
women is what women are now doing for all, 
through their innumerable societies for social 
service. The SociStS frangaise de secours aux 
blesses, though founded under the Empire, has 
received a signal development under the Re- 
public. The new organisations, the Association 
des dames frangaises and the Union des femmes 



SOCIAL REFORM 169 

de France^ had for their ifirst work the care of 
the wounded, but they widened their aims to 
the rehef of suffering in every direction. Their 
services during the present war must excite the 
admiration of all. The advent of lay women 
workers, which has lately been so marked, is 
one of the most evident marks of philanthropic 
progress. One could never have dreamed four 
decades ago that there was so much latent altru- 
ism in the nation. It is scarcely possible to 
exaggerate the extent and variety of works of 
relief, from the sanitarium for teachers to the 
bouchee de pain, bread distribution to the hun- 
gry; relief by work; help to families of ship- 
wrecked seamen and to liberated prisoners. 

To elevate the masses much has been done 
outside of the new education, of the more popu- 
lar artistic culture, of the new legal and scien- 
tific environments. The Laboratoires Bourbouze 
are free laboratories placed at the disposal of 
workingmen for the study of physics, chemis- 
try, electricity, photography, and micrography.^ 
The Universites populaires, a species of working- 
men's colleges, furnish an admirable comple- 
mentary education for labourers, though it may 
be added that they have not been entirely suc- 
cessful. Libraries have become more numer- 

* lAvret de I'Siudiant, 1908-1909, p. 137. 



170 FRANCE UNDER THE REPUBLIC 

ous, lectures more frequent,* and they are al- 
most always illustrated. 

There are, moreover, the temperance societies, 
clubs of all kinds, from the Ultramontane clubs 
of M. de Mun^ to those of extreme radicalism, 
the Young Men's Christian Associations,^ the 
work of Les amis des foyers de soldat, which is 
establishing popular clubs where soldiers, dur- 
ing their hours of leisure, may find a home, the 
societies of patronage for apprentices and for 
youth in general, gymnastic societies for na- 
tional physical culture, musical associations, 
both choral and instrumental, tending in a gen- 
eral way to social elevation. Many of these 
organisations are the work of the toilers them- 
selves. They have shown power of grouping, 
of social affinities and a spirit of social service, 
which has been a matter of astonishment for 
many. They have displayed a spirit of sol- 
idarity which, though not new, seems to have 
an unprecedented vitality. 

We have indicated, only in a general way, 
what is done. Frenchmen, so divided upon 

* Under the Empire it was difficult to secure permission to give these 
lectures, and when they were given, a representative of the police was 
present, and that, as a rule, at the expense of those who wished the 
lecture. 

* Mun, Comte A. de. Questions sociales, Discours politiques, Dis- 
cours et Merits divers. 

' These have been brought to their present state of efficiency through 
the generosity and guidance of Mr. James Stokes, of New York, 



SOCIAL REFORM 171 

many issues, have endeavoured to make real 
the third term of the RepubUcan motto: "Lib- 
erty, equality, and fraternity.'* The reading 
of any directory of the social and charitable 
works of Catholics,^ the Agenda protestant, a 
list of Hebrew charities, the Catalogue general 
officiel of the Exposition of Paris, 1900,^ the 
"Catalogue of French Exhibits of Social Econ- 
omy, of Hygiene and Charities" at the St. 
Louis Exposition, and the annual discourses of 
the French Academy sur les prix de vertu is 
a revelation not only of French altruism, but of 
its growing momentum. The spirit of the 
teachings of Christianity, of Saint-Simon, of 
Fourier, and of the later idealists has abundantly 
entered into this work of social elevation. Some 
have even exalted this spirit into a religion, the 
religion of kindness. There is no doubt but 
that the old school of political economists called 
Vecole dure, "the hard school," by Jules Simon, 
— a school which would do away with all chari- 
table agencies on the ground that they prevent a 
healthy elimination, — has nearly disappeared.^ 
On the other hand, the former sentimental giv- 
ing of alms is less frequent, though still exten- 
sively practised. The word "charity," in the 

* See for Paris, Abbe Duplessy, Paris religieux, 1900. 
« Vol. XVI. 

• Haussonville, Revue des Deux Mondes, vol. CLXI, p. 775. 



172 FRANCE UNDER THE REPUBLIC 

sense of beneficence, has been filled with more 
genuine humanity and more intelligence. More 
heart controlled by more brain, is the dominant 
note of this progress in the social and philan- 
thropic movement in France. 



CHAPTER VIII 

SOCIAL IMPROVEMENT AND 
MORALITY 

IN all countries moral conditions present 
grave problems. France is no exception. 
Divorces have risen from 4,123 in 1885 to 
14,261 in ISIO, suicides from 5,276 in 1871 to 
9,629 in 1911; alcoholism has so increased that 
the French people, once the most temperate 
of Europe, now stand in the forefront of alcohol 
consumers. In some of the large centres of the 
North and the North- West the evil has become 
appalling. The inmates of hospitals for the 
insane have increased from 49,589 to 100,291.^ 
The cases of delinquencies brought before "cor- 
rectional tribunals" have risen from 172,388 in 
1871 to 217,623 in 1911. By putting such 
figures together — and they are true figures — it 
is possible to make a most dismal picture; it 
is unfortunate that all the evidences of moral 
progress cannot also be put into mathematical 
formulae, and thereby be made to throw some 
light upon the dark shadows which are only 
too real. 

* Annuaire statisiiquet 1913. 
173 



174 FRANCE UNDER THE REPUBLIC 

The country has passed through a period of 
mental, moral, and rehgious transformation, 
during which much that was conventional and 
artificial in morals, superstitious in religion, has 
been swept away with much that was priceless. 
Thus, instead of the old scandal of husband 
and wife living apart, now there is divorce, and 
in a Catholic country divorce causes a more 
shocking impression than partially concealed 
concubinage. Yet in spite of the outcry of the 
systematic enemies of divorce, the statistics of 
marriage are, on the whole, very encouraging. 
Furthermore, marriages are increasing. From 
1880 to 1911 they rose from 279,000 to 312,000.^ 

As to the birth-rate, whose low ebb has been 
frequently ascribed by the clergy to immorality 
and irreligion, it must be admitted that this 
phenomenon is general all over Europe. The 
argument that this brings France upon a footing 
of inferiority to Germany has value only for 
those who make military considerations para- 
mount. The real superiority does not lie in 
number, but in the moral earnestness of indi- 
viduals. From this point of view it may be 
honestly asked if the very high birth-rate of 
36 per thousand for the French Canadians in 
the province of Quebec^ suggests higher ethical 

* Annuaire stafistique, 1913, » Siegfried, A., Le CanadOy p. 290. 



SOCIAL IMPROVEMENT 175 

motives than that of 22 per thousand in France. 
This birth-rate is still higher than that of several 
American states, which are far from being the 
least moral ones of the Union. Frenchmen at 
large are much perplexed over this question, 
which has been discussed in every great French 
periodical.^ To grapple with it there was organ- 
ised the Alliance nationale pour V accroissement 
de la population frangaise. Were this society 
merely to collect reliable data upon the many 
sides of the problem, it would doubtless render 
great services. 

The increase of alcoholism is largely explained 
by the fact that France earns much of her daily 
bread through the culture of the vine — in some 
parts of the country it is the only possible cul- 
ture. Again, the republicans, in their great ex- 
tension of freedom, made no exception to the 
sale of alcohol, and consequently from 1881 to 
1903 there were opened 110,000 new saloons.^ 
So long as cabarets are so numerous the con- 
sumption of alcohol will remain extensive. Ac- 
cording to the last report of the Minister of 
Justice there is an intimate correlation between 
crime and alcoholism. The classes making the 

^ See a series of articles upon "French Depopulation" in La Revue 
hebdomadaire for 1909. Those by M. Charles Gide, and by the Dean 
of the Law School of Paris, M. Ch. Lyon-Caen, are masterly. 

» r Illustration, Dec. 17, 1904. 



176 FRANCE UNDER THE REPUBLIC 

most extensive use of drinks — fishermen, min- 
ers, truckmen, and factory hands — have the 
largest number of criminals.^ The good sense, 
the intelHgence, and the conscience of the coun- 
try is arraying itself against intemperance. 
There is now an anti-alcoholic group in the 
Parliament, led by that distinguished and cou- 
rageous deputy, M. Joseph Reinach. The Min- 
ister of War has taken a decided stand upon the 
question. The officers of the army are ordered 
to give lectures to their soldiers upon this evil. 
The teachers do the same work in their schools. 
Nearly two thousand anti-alcoholic societies are 
waging war upon distilled — not upon fermented 
— drinks, and many organisations are even 
taking more radical positions. The Academy 
of Sciences have given their moral support to 
this cause. 

The attitude of the Parliament is such that 
one may expect two important reforms: one, 
the prohibition of the manufacture and sale of 
absinthe, and the other, the reduction of the 
number of saloons. The promoters of this 
movement are physicians, scientists, philan- 
thropists of large culture, who, like M. Reinach, 
would say: "We know that the struggle against 
alcoholism is for our country, for our race^ a 

lie Temps, Oct. 15, 1909. 



SOCIAL IMPROVEMENT 177 

question of life and death, of physical and in- 
tellectual health or of hopeless decadence." 
Never was a temperance crusade carried on 
more judiciously. As a result the Parliament 
has at last condemned absinthe and imposed 
important restrictions upon alcohol. Even be- 
fore the war, there was a decrease in its use. 
Now the example of Russia and of England has 
notably affected public opinion. 

The very intensity of modern civilisation has 
almost everywhere brought about an increase of 
mental diseases. However, one must not ex- 
aggerate this. The figures which we have given 
are not absolute indices of increase. Patients are 
now known and treated who formerly were al- 
most unnoticed. If they were harmless and poor 
they were allowed to go about, and when rich, 
they were kept at home, often in absolute seclu- 
sion; now they are almost always sent to insti- 
tutions. The mildest cases of those who are 
dependent upon the State have been scattered 
in families of rural districts with good results. 
Most of the hospitals for these patients have put 
into practice our greater knowledge of mental 
pathology and the idea of a greater kindness in 
dealing with these unfortunates. Suicides, bad 
in themselves, bad for society, bad every way, 
are not absolutely signs of moral retrogression. 



178 FRANCE UNDER THE REPUBLIC 

With the paroxysms of activity, of competition, 
of well-being, of pleasures and their concomi- 
tants, these deeds of despair were to be expected. 

As to crime in its worst forms it is apparently 
decreasing, while in the cases of brawls and 
blows it is gaining.^ 

The overstated charge of the conservatives, 
that much crime is left unpunished contains 
much truth. It is a fact that, in the humanisa- 
tion of justice, juries and judges have been 
lenient with transgressors, not from indifference, 
corruption, or cowardice, but from a more philo- 
sophical and abstract conception of justice, or 
from the idea that delinquencies have in them a 
social element, for which the individual should 
not be punished. The humanistic movement 
has led republicans to apply too suddenly the 
ethics of the parable of the prodigal son to cul- 
prits. Formerly delinquents of almost every 



1 CONTENTIONS, CRIMES, 


AND PRISONS 




1871 


1911 


Cases for decision before justice of peace . 


384,026 


363,762 


Cases for conciliation in court 


57,341 


12,365 


Cases for conciliation out of court 


2,250,523 


1,203,999 


Cases referred to correctional tribunals . . 


172,388 


217,623 


Cases of conviction for violence or crime . 


3,955 


1,919 


Prisoners in "houses of arrest," prisons. . 


14,838 


6,529 


Convicts in local prisons 


22,018 


18,291 


Convicts in reform schools 


7,310 


4,291 



Annuaire statistique, 1913. 



SOCIAL IMPROVEMENT 179 

kind, called for military service, were incorpo- 
rated into African companies; but the Parlia- 
ment, thinking that the transgressions com- 
mitted did not deserve such hard treatment, and 
hoping that the good element of the army would 
exert a bettering influence, placed these repris 
de justice in the regular army. The result of 
this was an alarming increase of crime among 
soldiers. The principle of moral contagion, 
which applies to right as well as to wrong, is a 
sound one; but in this case the reform was not 
sufficiently gradual or hedged with sufficient 
legal guarantees. The outcome was not calmly 
studied, but the opposition used it for partisan 
ends. As to crime in general, were the nation 
to spend a few millions more for a larger police 
force, it is certain that there would be a striking 
improvement. 

A fair survey of French criminality shows 
that some forms of delinquencies have altogether 
disappeared, while the distressing feature of the 
present is the increase of juvenile crime. This, 
however, is no more exceptional in France than 
in Holland, Italy, and Germany.^ England is 
favoured in this respect, because its benevolent 
societies have exported to the colonies orphans 
largely recruited from classes likely to yield 

* Fouillee, A., La France au point de vue moral, p. 158. 



180 FRANCE UNDER THE REPUBLIC 

many young delinquents. Catholics ascribe this 
juvenile moral lapse in France to the absence 
of religious instruction in the schools. Unfor- 
tunately for their claims, it is well known that the 
greatest periods of increase were at a time when 
the Catholic catechism was everywhere taught 
in the schools, and these schools were under the 
control of the Church. During the period from 
1841-1851 the delinquencies rose from 14,781 
to 22,251, that is, 33 per cent; from 1851 to 
1861 the rise was from 22,251 to 25,733, or 15 
per cent; while from 1881 to 1891, under un- 
sectarian schools, there was an increase from 
35,332 to 36,975, or a Kttle less than 5 per cent.^ 
Le Temps says, on the authority of Gabriel 
Tarde, that from 1830 to 1880, under the system 
of national Catholic schools and the absolute 
ascendency of the clergy, juvenile delinquency 
had quadrupled in France, at least for boys.^ 
Fair-minded men, like Fouillee and Tarde, have 
shown that the schools were not responsible for 
juvenile crime. Among the most potent causes 
pointed out are the phenomenal development of 
saloons, of the yellow press, of pornographic lit- 
erature. In many cases of juvenile delinquents 
it was found that, for the most part, they had 
managed to avoid schools of any kind, and that 

^lUd. 'March 20, 1897. 



SOCIAL IMPROVEMENT 181 

the crimes are performed between sixteen and 
twenty-one, when the average boy has been for 
some time out of school. In deahng with 
criminals, the Republic has been actuated less 
by social vengeance than by the purpose to 
save the culprit, less by the penitentiary idea 
than by the reformatory. Prisoners are sub- 
jected to a regime which will help them to earn 
their daily bread more easily when they leave 
prison, while the uneducated, under 35 years of 
age, are compelled to attend prison schools. 

The most encouraging feature in the present 
situation is that the growth of every evil has 
called forth moral agencies to oppose it, while 
new institutions and new moral conceptions were 
imparting strength to the national life. It may 
astonish many to learn that for several years 
Paris had a Superior School of Morals in which 
the leading spirits of France discussed all 
possible questions of practical ethics. That 
institution has since evolved into a more com- 
prehensive one, the School of High Social 
Studies, in which the foremost scholars and 
the foremost men of action throw all the light 
they can upon the great scientific, moral, and 
social issues of our time. More competence and 
good-will have never united in a more generous 
service. "The Union of Free Thinkers and 



182 FRANCE UNDER THE REPUBLIC 

Free Believers," another organisation of ethical 
culture, discussed, on Sundays during 1908-1909, 
''Social Problems and Personal Duties," rally- 
ing many earnest men of large calibre. 

There are between fifty and sixty societies 
banded together under the name of "Federation 
of Societies against Pornography" to oppose 
public licence. They all, often with great 
courage, fight the sale or exhibition of obscene 
engravings, obscene books, obscene and grossly 
immoral plays and kindred evils. Through these 
organisations, from 1891 to 1905, 915 cases of 
infamous immoral trade were referred to the 
courts, 1,846 individuals were accused, 761 were 
condemned to less than a year of imprisonment, 
and 16 to more.^ 

The Societe des droits de Vhomme is ready 
anywhere to take the defence of those whose 
rights are disregarded. It takes up every year 
seven or eight thousand cases before the French 
tribunals.^ It may be added here that the habit 
of litigation about trifles has lost much of its 
hold upon French peasants. 

The former attitude of Frenchmen toward 

^ Berenger, R., Manuel 'pratique pour la lutte contre la pornographie, 
p. 152. This little volume is an admirable study of the stricter laws of 
moral repression enacted by the Republic, the methods to be used by 
societies of moral reform, and the notable cases brought before the 
courts. 

2 Le Signal, Nov. 23, 1907. 



SOCIAL IMPROVEMENT 183 

animals has undergone a change. There has 
long been the efficient Societe jprotedrice des 
animaux, and recently was founded La Ligue 
frangaise pour la protection du cheval. The 
movement of greater kindness toward animals, 
strong and healthy as it is, has gone to the ex- 
treme of having, at Reuil, near Paris, a Maison 
de sante pour les animaux} 

Besides all the agencies which make for 
morality there are those of the churches, which 
are quite potent. Religion is the greatest ally 
of morality. And, after all, is not this the 
point where the Christian and the Free Thinker 
may come to an understanding.^ What one 
aims at in the name of God, the other demands 
in the name of reason. The great moral prin- 
ciples in which Christian and rationalistic ethics 
concur, the Parliament requires to be taught in 
all the primary schools of the country.^ That 
teaching not only clarifies moral consciousness, 
but also acts powerfully upon the pupils by 
moral suggestions which cannot but be efficient. 

The censors of the Repubhc cannot deny the 
fact that, judged by their legislation, their or- 
ganised efforts, and their education. Frenchmen 
have never displayed a deeper sense of responsi- 

1 Le Siecle, Oct. 26, 1909. 

' See the chapter upon Moral Instruction, 



184 FRANCE UNDER THE REPUBLIC 

bility and moral solidarity. Never have ethical 
problems been more prominent in the mind of 
the thinking elite. Never have moral consid- 
erations so determined French philosophical 
thought, and never were there so many books 
written on morals or on the moral aspects of 
education, of pohtics, philosophy, and sociology. 
The attitude of the best artists is no longer 
what it was under the Empire. The doctrine of 
art for art's sake has lost its former prominence, 
and some artists have substituted that of "art 
from life for life." The doctrine of the moral 
utility of art has never been preached to such 
an extent. Again, while literary men, like art- 
ists, are often unmoral and many immoral, there 
is now a moral purpose in much of contemporary 
literature which was absolutely wanting in by- 
gone days. This is especially true of the drama 
and of fiction. The leading writers themselves 
are better men than those of half a century ago. 
The national idea is now less chauvinistic 
than ever before. To love one's country is no 
longer to hate that of another. At the time of 
the Tonkin expedition the motto of the Radicals 
in Parliament was, '* Tonkin for the Tonkin- 
ese !" There is now a large body of Frenchmen 
who, in reference to the complications in North 
Africa, say, "Morocco for the Moroccans !" In 



SOCIAL IMPROVEMENT 185 

no country of the world is there a greater readi- 
ness than in France to accept the international 
golden rule. The thought of war is more and 
more revolting to Frenchmen. Justice and 
equity loom larger in the popular mind than 
force. When in 1907 the Petit Parisien had a 
plebiscite which called forth 15,000,000 votes 
upon the greatest Frenchman, the highest place 
was not given to a warrior, but to a scientist 
who ever preached peace — Pasteur. The sec- 
ond was awarded to Victor Hugo — the poet 
who in his best days exalted peace — and Napo- 
leon came fourth. Another paper, by the same 
process, asked who are the great men, not yet 
in the Pantheon, who should be there. The 
men designated were Pasteur, Gambetta, Thiers, 
Parmentier, Curie, Denfert-Rochereau, Savor- 
gnan de Brazza, Alexandre Dumas, and Lamar- 
tine. The only soldier in this list, Denfert- 
Rochereau, the heroic defender of Belfort, came 
sixth. The economist Frederic Passy and 
Judge J.-L. Renault, the authority upon inter- 
national law, have received the Nobel prize for 
their peace work. 

This is in perfect keeping with the standards 
of moral value at the present time. It may be 
fearlessly asserted that the fundamental con- 
ceptions of the basis of life have been renovated. 



186 FRANCE UNDER THE REPUBLIC 

The idea of evolution and progress has replaced 
the old dogma of unchangeableness and of dead 
stability, which ignored the necessity for indi- 
viduals and societies constantly to readjust 
themselves to ever-changing conditions. The 
asceticism of former days is passing away. The 
body is no longer the organ that must be weak- 
ened in order to strengthen the soul, the proud 
human reason is no longer to be humbled before 
a great ecclesiastical authority; but body and 
mind must be developed for social service. 

The new conception of the body has led to 
great progress in sanitation, in hygiene and 
physical culture, while belief in the soundness 
of the light of reason has generated the move- 
ments of education and of scientific research 
which we have sketched. Labour, formerly 
viewed as Millet has represented it, a divine 
penance for man on account of sin, now seems 
more and more a factor of happiness. Nature 
no longer appears as a hard, harsh stepmother 
giving man a painfully earned morsel of bread; 
she is no longer, in French eyes, the divine 
scourge of a revengeful God, but the generous 
rewarder of intelligent and conscientious efforts. 
Matter, once associated in French public opinion 
with that which is gross, impure, and perish- 
able, has come to be viewed as a mode of ex- 



SOCIAL IMPROVEMENT 187 

plaining the universe quite as mysterious as 
the spirit itself. In recasting their own thought 
in reference to man's place in human society, 
or in the cosmos, Frenchmen have largely freed 
themselves from systems built upon material- 
istic doctrines. There is a noticeable tendency 
to rise above the ethnic fatalism of polygenists 
like Gobineau, or mechanistic determinists like 
Taine. 

There is also a visible inclination to discard 
the system of brutal ethics, built upon the doc- 
trine of evolution as formulated by its illustrious 
founder, Charles Darwin. The ethical doctrine 
resting upon the principle of the struggle for the 
"survival of the fittest" has always been obnox- 
ious to the Gallic admirers of the author of 
"The Origin of Species." They accepted his 
biological conclusions, but not the ethical infer- 
ences of his disciples. The principle of "co- 
operation" has gained ground over that of 
"struggle for existence." Renouvier claims that 
"man, rising above sheer biological evolution, 
has brought into human society the law of jus- 
tice, of charity, and solidarity." M. Leon Bour- 
geois has changed the formula of Darwin by 
saying that life "is the struggle of each for the 
existence of all." Fouillee has made it "a 
•struggle for coexistence," and Deschanel makes 



188 FRANCE UNDER THE REPUBLIC 

it "the union for life." Clemenceau, with an 
earnestness that no one can question, says, 
"Sociahsm is social goodness in action; it is the 
intervention of all for the sake of the victim of 
the fatal vitality of others. . . . Man hinders 
man, I have said. Man also helps man. The 
help for life in the struggle for life is the order 
of life, born of the supreme law of solidarity of 
all."^ 

Taken all in all, the trend of French ethics 
is not far from that of the Founder of Christian- 
ity. In the general life the word duty has come 
to take a larger place and to be more inclusive. 
Duty toward others has come to have the sense of 
duty toward ourselves. Morality is man's high- 
est adaptation to the needs of all. The sense of 
moral obligation springs from moral convictions 
rather than from religious beliefs. The suprem- 
acy of conscience is more and more asserted. 
When members of juries in the department of 
Yonne refuse to swear in the name of God,^ if 
they are sincere, their act is ethically superior 
to the blind or mechanical conformity of former 
days. Intellectual honesty has never been more 
honoured, nor casuistry more unpopular. Love 
of truth, not of pure knowledge, but of that 
apprehension of reality which tells upon our 

* La MMie sociale, pp. xiv and xv. * Le Temps, Aug. 7, 1909. 



SOCIAL IMPROVEMENT 189 

deepest life, is growing. A new conception of 
woman largely prevails, and that will have stu- 
pendous consequences. A greater respect for 
woman is growing. She often shows herself 
equal to her husband, when not superior, and 
young men have largely abandoned the former 
Roman idea of being husband-masters.^ Though 
appearances might lead some to infer the con- 
trary, French traditional virtues, such as family 
love, social cheerfulness, the prevalence of thrift, 
of economy, and the hatred of debts have never 
been more flourishing. As Comte d'Avenel says, 
"a thrifty people will never be a gambling peo- 
ple."^ In the French army an officer is sus- 
pended for debts. Former conventional habits 
without any ethical motives have been greatly 
disturbed either by moral revolts or by new 
views of man's biological, economic, and social 
relations; but France has never had a keener 
sense of moral rectitude, of solidarity and, with 
all the failings that her critics magnify, she 
leans strongly to the side of genuine moral life. 

* Faguet, E., Propos littSraireSy vol. V, p. 205. 
' Le Franqais de mon temps, p. 74. 



CHAPTER IX 
RELIGIOUS DOUBT AND RELIGION 

TO form a just estimate of the real religious 
situation, we must not assume that 
everything which is unsatisfactory now 
was ideal at the end of the Second Empire. The 
Atheisme et le peril social ^ of Bishop Dupanloup 
paints a dismal picture of the religious situation 
at that time. The sermons of Protestant preach- 
ers present no brighter outlook.^ That of Pere 
Didon, in 1867, is no more hopeful than that 
which a Dominican would draw now.^ A for- 
mer member of the same order, writing upon the 
Commune at its very close said: "What, then, 
is a people without a God.^ Philosophers had 
endeavoured to say, but facts have revealed it 
with a reality that defies words. The demon- 
stration of social atheism is finished. Provi- 
dence gave it for an hour the grandest of thea- 
tres, the freest of orgies and the most terrible 
of dramas. . . . There is the work of a people 

11866. 

' See Edmond de Pressense, Discours religieux; Eugene Bersier, 
Sermons, vols. I, II, and III. 
' Raynaud (P^re Stanislas), Le Pere Didon, p. 52. 

190 



DOUBT AND RELIGION 191 

that has no longer any God."^ Voicing the 
bankruptcy of faith at the same period, Pere 
Didon says: ''We have been defeated, we were 
to be. We know neither how to command nor 
how to obey. We have lost the faith. A people 
without faith is doomed to defeat." ^ In 1872 
he speaks of irreligion as national.^ 

At the Protestant National Synod in the same 
year Guizot speaks of ''a new explosion of 
anti-Christian ardour."^ At the same session 
Pasteur Athanase Coquerel shows "atheism as- 
serting itself with an energy of negation without 
precedent," "the atheism of the street," "athe- 
ism penetrating into all ranks of society," "athe- 
ism in persons of all ages."^ Another delegate 
states that the scientific trend has become little 
by little "positivistic and materialistic."^ A 
little later, Pere Didon glorifies "heaven which 
seems empty to the eyes of our sceptical genera- 
tion."^ In his sermons in Marseilles, the an- 
tagonism of irreligion is the leitmotif of his 
preaching.^ "In our land of France," he says, 
"we are born Christians, we die Christians, but 

^ Loyson, H., De la rSforme catholique, p. 105. 
^ Didon, Pere J. H., Lettres du Pere Didon a un ami, 1902, p. 2. 
' Raynaud, o'p. cit., p. 92. 

* Bersier, E., Histoire du Synode ginSral de VEglise reformie, 1872, 
vol I, p. 290. 

6 Ibid., p. 153. • IMd., p. 148. 

7 Didon, op. dt., p. 15. • Raynaud, op. cit., p. 105. 



192 FRANCE UNDER THE REPUBLIC 

between the cradle and the grave passions speak 
like mistresses, scepticism invades our minds, 
material life with its vortices of business absorb 
our time, and we do not live like Christians* 
Faith is only at the two extremities of our life: 
the cradle which belongs to her, the grave which 
belongs to her also, and that is all." ^ 

When the faith of the ''cradle" and the "faith 
of the grave" is all, one may say that the vital 
faith of the nation is gone; but that we will 
not say, either of the early days of the Republic 
or of the present. The actual religious losses 
were not so great as represented then or as 
lamented now. A fair correction of the religious 
parallax will place us face to face with a more 
hopeful state of things. The loss which many 
Catholics deplore is their former ability to im- 
pose their belief. Professor Fonsegrive says with 
regret that two victories have been won by 
society over ''the doctrine of Catholic truth — 
the coexistence of several religions in countries 
equally civilised, and the proclamation of inde- 
pendence of philosophical thought. "^ There has 

^Ihid.y p. 125. Abbe Gayraud, a former Dominican, now priest 
and deputy, thirty years later speaks in a similar manner: "The mass 
of electors have scarcely anything more from Catholicism than baptism, 
first communion, the forms of marriage and some of the practices of 
church attendance dictated by habits and social conventions." {La 
Republique et la faix religieuse, p. 43.) 

« Pechenard, Mgr. P. L.. Les Luttes de VEglise, p. 775. 



DOUBT AND RELIGION 193 

been unquestionably a great nominal decline in 
formal membership. Abbe Cresty, in 1905, set 
at about eleven millions those in France who 
could properly be called Catholics.^ This does 
not necessarily mean a real decrease of spiritual 
power, but that the Church has been relieved 
of a dead weight that was its bane. Its grave 
error was to consider these accretions as ster- 
ling religious values, and to speak of ''Catholic 
France" in terms which were as gratifying to 
this body as they were misleading to all. 

The stern fact was that the nation was mov- 
ing away from its religious moorings. Now the 
priest has been deprived of his former non- 
religious power — the power which rendered him 
so unpopular under Napoleon and under Mac- 
Mahon. He has ceased to be the man through 
whom almost every one had to secure state- 
advancement in any career, or impunity from 
crime at the hand of the judge. No more is he 
the stepping-stone of the religious politician to 
office. He has no longer any Tartufe about 
him. No more can he molest the non-Catholic 
scholar or terrorise the luke-warm Catholic pro- 
fessor, or even the doubting one, by the pros- 
pect of dismissal. Even his pulpit is no longer 
a source of effectual religious threats. He must 

^ L' Esprit nouveau dans I' action morale et religieuset p. 36. 



194 FRANCE UNDER THE REPUBLIC 

convince, not command, his hearers. His pa- 
rishioners expect from him more education and 
more culture — and he has it. Free-thinking 
opposition has called forth the latent intellectual 
energy of the priest, and anti-clericalism has 
really strengthened him in the conflict. 

However, the repeated political defeats of 
clerical candidates show that the clergy have 
lost their former hold, and that the causes which 
they endorse are decidedly unpopular. As 
Comte G. d'Avenel, a distinguished French 
Cathohc, puts it, Catholicism "'has lost its 
material domination, the secular arm. It no 
longer leads the State and has no longer any 
place in the State. It has lost the masses; its 
temples, in a thousand places, are deserted."^ 
Anti-clericalism is often synonymous with anti- 
religion. Socialism, long and bitterly antago- 
nised by the priests, has become a unit against 
them. Science, attacked by the clergy, and 
remembering the treatment of its most distin- 
guished spirits in former days, often counts 
every scientific advance as so much gained upon 
the spirit of obscurantism in the Church. Many 
Frenchmen have rejected conceptions of God 
unworthy of our age. The "revengeful God,'* 
the God defender of mechanical morality, the 

^ Les Frangais de mon temps, p. 165. 



DOUBT AND RELIGION 195 

"God gendarme on behalf of capitalists,** are 
conceptions which retain their grasp upon the 
masses but are abandoned by thinkers. There 
are those — and they are not new — who hold 
sincerely that atheistical science unravels much 
better than anything else the enigma of the uni- 
verse. Blatant, arrogant, and militant atheists 
exist, but they are not as common as might be 
supposed.^ 

The churchless are far from indifferent to re- 
ligious problems, and any able religious speaker 
will find hearers outside of the churches more 
easily than in America. In the early part of 
1907 the Mercure de France organised a vast 
inquiry, asking eminent men "whether we are 
witnessing a dissolution or an evolution of re- 
ligious thought.^" The overwhelming majority 
of French contributors decided for the second 
alternative, that we are in the presence of a re- 
ligious evolution.^ The editor of that interest- 
ing symposium wisely says: "It is undeniable 
that religious studies have taken, of late years, 
an extraordinary development; never, perhaps, 
since the Reformation has there been such a 
display of curiosity for all that concerns religion, 
such labours of erudition, of criticism, and of 

* Sabatier, P., Lettre ouverte d, S. E. le Cardinal Gibbons, 1907, p. 16. 
» Mercure de France, 1907, Nos. 236, 237, 238, 239, 240, and 241. 



196 FRANCE UNDER THE REPUBLIC 

propaganda. There is in all countries the pub- 
lication of works of the highest order upon re- 
ligious questions; there is the creation or exten- 
sion of reviews devoted to religious philosophy, 
to the history of religions, to controversies ; there 
is the ever-increasing number of lectures and 
regular courses in which the religious idea is 
studied in all its manifestations. We must also 
recall the work done in France at the Musee 
Guimet, at the Practical School of High Studies, 
at the College de France, at the School of Anthro- 
pology, at the College of Social Sciences, at the 
School of High Social Studies, in denominational 
schools, and particularly the recent creation, at 
the Sorbonne, of several chairs of religious his- 
tory, etc."^ 

Professor Th. Ruyssen speaks of " the in- 
numerable works which from year to year show 
the increasing prosperity of studies of objective 
religious philosophy. A special publication, a 
year book of religious philosophy, would not be 
too much to sum up the scientific researches en- 
couraged by the curiosity of the public better 
and better informed." ^ 

The Musee Guimet gives to those interested 
in the study of comparative religions materials 
nowhere else available in the world. The Col- 

1 Ibid., 236, p. 577. ' VAnnee psychologique, 1909, p. 357. 



DOUBT AND RELIGION 197 

lege de France has had for many years an ad- 
mirable course of highly important scientific 
studies on religions. Professor Reville, long the 
incumbent of this chair, was a radical Unitarian, 
but a most candid and able scholar, ever insist- 
ing upon the transcendent importance of relig- 
ion. Professor Loisy, recently elected to the 
same chair, is animated with a kindred spirit. 
The Practical School of High Studies in the Sor- 
bonne has a score of courses by specialists de- 
voted to the religions of the great peoples of the 
world, while the Sorbonne itself has now three 
chairs studying different periods in the history 
of Christianity. 

The feeling grows that religion has been one 
of the fundamental determinants of the charac- 
ter of various civilisations. At the School of 
High Social Studies, where all the great ques- 
tions of our time have been ably and honestly 
discussed, religion has also its place. The pub- 
lished lectures for 1903-1904 reveal a deep con- 
cern for belief on the part of all lecturers, and 
a profound sense of the social utility of religion.^ 
The size of the audiences, along with their 
character, is also quite significant. There was 
never, during the preceding regime, such an 
intellectual zest for the problems of religion. 

* Religions et aoeiHes, 1905, 



198 FRANCE UNDER THE REPUBLIC 

The philosophers have given — and are still giv- 
ing — a large place to this subject. They admit 
more and more the importance of religious feel- 
ings in the evolution of society and in com- 
parative psychology, as well as the bearing of 
those feelings upon the various aspects of Meta- 
physics. The majority of them are ready to 
concede the practical value of the idea of God 
in ethics, as well as the great action of religious 
forces upon sociological phenomena. A philos- 
ophy is to be tested by its moral results. This 
accounts, in part at least, for the popularity of 
the religious addresses of Boutroux, and the large 
number of young priests at Bergson's lectures. 
In the philosophical teaching of the secondary 
schools there is a general insistence upon the 
existence of God and the immortality of the 
soul. Binet says that he met far more scepti- 
cism in society than in his classes of philosophy.^ 
The theological conceptions of the professors 
vary most widely, from the God of the theolo- 
gians of Latin Christianity to that of the pan- 
theists. They are no longer left to the neces- 
sity of accepting or rejecting a single definite 
conception of God as if it were the only one 
possible, but have other theistic alternatives. 
"Atheism," says M. Georges Lyon, ''is excep- 

* Enseignement et religion, 1907, p. 81. 



DOUBT AND RELIGION 199 

tional in the French philosophical world." ^ 
This opinion of the distinguished rector of the 
Academy of Lille has been again and again en- 
dorsed before the writer by other prominent 
speculative thinkers. 

The introduction of philosophy into the do- 
main of religion upon a new scale is visible in 
the works of the best Catholic and Protestant 
writers, in the theses of Protestant students 
and in the better class of sermons. While the 
cleavage which has taken place in the world of 
beliefs has arrayed, on the one side, many who 
have become unreligious and atheistic, a cor- 
responding movement has taken place, on the 
other, toward a more positive faith. Atheists 
have become deists, deists have accepted a 
broad theism, the philosophical theists became 
for a time neo-Christians, the neo-Christians 
liberal Catholics, and some liberal Catholics have 
become ultramontane. Among those who have 
gravitated toward belief there has been a ten- 
dency to give, at every angle of the religious 
prism, a larger place to the mystical spirit with- 
out surrendering their philosophical ideals. 

It is in part this tendency that has led toward 
the Catholic Church men like Brunetiere, de 

^ "L'Evolution de I'enseignement philosophique," in L'AnnSe philoso- 
jihique, 1908, p. 154. 



200 FRANCE UNDER THE REPUBLIC 

Voglie, Bourget, Coppee, Huysmans, and others 
who were Free Thinkers.^ There is philosoph- 
ical toleration in the Church sufficient to keep 
in it such distinguished scholars as Anatole 
Leroy-Beaulieu, Georges Picot, Thureau-Dan- 
gin, Georges Goyau; scientists like Gaudry and 
Lapparent; philosophers like Boutroux and 
Olle-Laprune; critics like Brunetiere, Doumic, 
and lesser lights, who are not inclined to move 
backward. Whatever be the strenuous restric- 
tions imposed from Rome, there is a large body 
of religious literature breathing a new spirit of 
rational certainty, of strong philosophical grasp 
of the basic truths of theology. Even a mere 
perusal of such works as the following will con- 
vince one that reason and science have never 
been more honoured by the Catholic thinkers of 
France : Abbe de Broglie, Les conditions modernes 
de V accord entre la foi et la raison;- Fonsegrive, 
Le Catholicisme et la religion de Vesprit;^ Abbe 
Laberthonniere, Essais de pJiilosophie religieuse;^ 
Abbe Klein, Le Fait religieux et la maniere de 
Vohserver;^ Abbe Denis, Esquisse d'une apologie 
philosophique du christianisme;^ Le P. La Barre, 
La Vie du dogme catholique,'^ Le P. G. de Pascal, 



^ Sargeret, J., Les grands convertis; Abbe Delfour, Les Co 


ntemporain 


1895. 




* 1903. » 1899. 


* 1903. 


* 1903. 6 1898. 


' 1898. 



DOUBT AND RELIGION 201 

Le Christianisme} Catholic writers have able 
works also on the rehgious hfe of England and 
America, which will generate in the Church dis- 
appointing hopes^ about the progress of Ca- 
tholicism in those countries; but these books, 
none the less, represent philosophical and his- 
torical progress. 

The same conclusions must be reached in 
reference to their reviews. They have, for ex- 
ample, Le Correspondant, the Annales de philoso- 
phie chretienne, the Revue des questions historiques, 
the Nouvelle revue theologique, the Etudes, La 
Reforme sociale, the Revue biblique, La Democratic 
chretienne, the Revue d'histoire et de litterature 
religieuse, the Revue de Vinstitut catholique de 
Paris, etc., which are equally worthy with the 
publications of any other religious body of the 
world. They have largely developed, also, a 
popular press which we may call "yellow," a 
press which will do much harm to the Church 
by its extravagance and fanaticism, but the 
character of those above referred to deserves 
much praise. The publications founded long 
ago have come to a greater importance under 



» 190S. 

' Thureau-Dangin, Le Catholicisme en Angleterre au XIX' siecle; 
La Renaissance catholique en Angleterre aii XIX^ siecle; Bremond, Henri, 
L'Inquiitude religieuse, 1^'"^ shie, 1902, and 1^^^ serie, 1909. See also 
books and review articles by Abbe Klein, 



202 FRANCE UNDER THE REPUBLIC 

the Republic, while the others suggest enormous 
progress. They have even won over La Revue 
des Deux Mondes. 

At the same time, the spiritual autocracy of 
the Vatican is as absolute as ever; the Gallican 
liberties, episcopal dignity and the independence 
of theological research are things of the past. 
Some bishops — not those appointed since the 
Separation — have endeavoured to modernise 
the education of their clergy and have advo- 
cated the study of science as a help to faith. 
In some ways the Catholic universities of Paris 
and of Lille have done nobly in introducing into 
their work modern critical and scientific meth- 
ods, but with only very moderate success. 
Those who are leaning toward obscurantism are 
far more numerous. In the seminary of Issy — 
not in a distant part of France, but in Paris — 
a theological student asked how Noah could 
have fed all the animals in the ark, having so 
little room for provisions. The professor an- 
swered: "One may consider as probable that 
all animals in the ark suffered from sea-sickness 
and therefore had no need of food."^ 

But whatever be the system of training, 
Catholic clergymen show a greater readiness to 
break away from the Church, and several hun- 

* De Narfon, J., op. cit., p. 357. 



DOUBT AND RELIGION 203 

dred priests have left it during the last third 
of a century. Through the increase of intel- 
lectual honesty, the influence of the military 
service and the loss of political power by the 
clergy, there has been a wholesome elimination 
of the former doubtful and mercenary elements 
of the priesthood. Never was there a more ac- 
tive and aggressive spirit among young priests 
and never have the French clergy allied to a 
greater degree culture with devotion, and life 
with doctrine. If the growth of the orders is, 
as the ultramontanes assert, an index of spiritual 
progress, then there has never been a greater 
advance than during recent years. In any 
case one may say of the clergy, both secular 
and regular, that they have grown in intensity 
and earnestness where they are dominant, in 
intelligence and moral power where they have 
been in touch with the philosophical and scien- 
tific life. Politically and socially they move in 
a narrower range; they no longer reflect State 
prestige, but their real, lasting spiritual influence 
is greater. When they do not waste their energy 
in condemning, for the thousandth time, the 
wickedness of anti-clericals, their spirit is that 
of a large evangelism permeated with earnest- 
ness and poetry. Some of them lay stress 
upon natural virtues as preferable to super- 



204 FRANCE UNDER THE REPUBLIC 

natural and passive ones, though they beheve in 
both. As in the past, they insist upon the im- 
mutability of their Church; but, strange as it 
may seem, they now speak also of her progress 
and of her wonderful adaptability to changed 
conditions. Apart from their innumerable ef- 
forts in France, they are leading in Catholic mis- 
sions. M. Eugene Louvet states that they have 
in the mission field 8,500 French priests, 33,600 
French nuns, and about 3,600 French friars.^ 

There has also been a great change in the 
laity. Hitherto the bishops used this element 
for agitation — they still do — but it . has be- 
come more active in the Church. Laymen are 
no longer the indifferent, passive, voiceless peo- 
ple of four decades ago, whose religion was 
absolutely formal. Several laymen of emi- 
nence have written books which Catholic leaders 
should heed, such as that of Julien de Narfon's 
Vers VEglise lihre; L. Chaine's Les Catholiques 
franqais et leurs difficultes actuelles; Doctor Mar- 
cel Rifaux's Les Conditions de retour au catho- 
licisme; and Comte G. d'Avenel's Les Franqais 
de mon temps. The country never had more 
Catholics of an earnest, genuine faith, willing 
to stand as faithful witnesses to their principles, 
than now. 

^ Quoted by Abbe Gayraud, op. cit, p. 78. 



DOUBT AND RELIGION 205 

But while that is the case, they never had a 
better opportunity to do rehgious work. The 
present war affected them profoundly and gave 
them a chance to display their best traits. 

Protestants have undergone losses and made 
gains also, but, as we show elsewhere,^ they have 
never been more genuinely active or influential. 
Israelites lay now less stress upon their racial 
claims, and show signs not a few of a clearer 
religious consciousness and a growing altruism. 
It may be positively asserted that they have 
been foremost among religious bodies as gener- 
ous givers to objects of general interest. 

The French are far more religious than they 
seem. The condition which we have set forth 
in the foregoing pages shows a depth of serious 
thinking which expresses itself strongly at the 
hour of crisis. The conflict has revealed the 
force of these convictions by more outward 
manifestations, but they were there. It has 
called forth the best spirit of Catholics, Protes- 
tants, Jews, and Free Thinkers alike. At the 
critical hour the differences that had separated 
them w^ere bridged both in private life, and 
especially at the front. Religion, which is the 
conscious union of man with God, is also the 
greatest tie that binds man to man. The clergy 

» See Chap. XV. 



206 FRANCE UNDER THE REPUBLIC 

of the several religious bodies have done splen- 
did service in a really catholic spirit. Often 
priests have offered the last comforts of religion 
to Protestants, pastors have invoked divine 
blessings upon Catholics and Hebrews at their 
last hour, and rabbis have forgotten the exclu- 
sive practices of former days to perform the 
last rites upon the bodies of their Catholic and 
Protestant comrades. Most Free Thinkers have 
found in their theistic convictions the strength 
to die like courageous patriots. All have had 
a common faith in a supreme justice and a 
supreme mercy to which they appealed in their 
supreme need. Almost all of them in dying 
would have voiced their faith in the phrase of 
the poet: *'Thou wilt not leave us in the dust." 



CHAPTER X 

THE CONTEMPORARY FRENCHMAN 
IN THE NEW LIFE 

THE consequences of the progress which 
we have sketched manifest themselves 
in many ways. The material environ- 
ments of the contemporary Frenchman have 
been strikingly improved. The writer has 
known a village for fifty years, during which 
the population has remained stationary, but the 
homes are much larger and nearly twice as nu- 
merous. From 1871 to 1907 there were built in 
France 1,300,000 more homes than were torn 
down. The huts with only one window are 
growing fewer, while the new erections have 
generally more than five windows.^ The mud 
houses with thatched roofs are now viewed by 
the people as the relics of bygone days. The 
peasant who under the Empire spent his eve- 
nings in the dark, or made a most moderate 
use of tallow candles, is now provided with 

^ Annuaire statistique, 1909. 
207 



208 FRANCE UNDER THE REPUBLIC 

abundant petroleum.^ The introduction and 
wide distribution of this oil among the masses 
has created a revolution in their habits. In- 
stead of spending their long winter evenings in 
relative darkness, now they have an inexpensive 
light which enables them to read or work. 
Paris, as well as other large centres, used spar- 
ingly wax candles and vegetal oil-lamps, with 
a little gas; now the city has the most modern 
means of lighting with artistic fixtures, the 
beauty of which remains unsurpassed any- 
where. The use of coal for all purposes has 
more than trebled.^ 

The adulteration of food is more clever and 
more frequent than before, though it is severely 
punished when detected;^ it may be doubted, 
however, if this fraud in the quality of food — 
when it exists — is more detrimental to health 
than the deterioration which formerly came 
from ignorance and lack of adequate means to 
preserve it. As a whole, food is far more abun- 
dant and much better than under the Empire. 
Even in the most backward villages the range 
of comestibles has been greatly widened. In 



^The use of kerosene has passed from 1.89 lbs. per inhabitant in 
1871, to 24.64 lbs. in 1911. The price of the oil has decreased from 
$0.0225 per pound to $0.01. 

» From 18,860,000 it has increased to 59.530.000 tons. 

> Laboratories are being established in most cities for its detection. 



THE NEW LIFE 



209 



rural districts, not to speak of cities, grocers 
have trebled and quadrupled the articles of 
food which they keep. Butchers are unanimous 
in maintaining that the inferior cuts of meat 
have not increased in price, but because so 
many people now desire the better pieces the 
price of these has gone up. There has been a 
large increase in the use of almost all articles 
of food. 

CONSUMPTION OF FOOD PER INHABITANT 





1871 


1911 


Wheat 

Potatoes 

Sugar 

Wine 


6.5 bushels 

512 pounds 

17.16 pounds 

16.5 gallons 

4.77 gallons 

0.015 pound 

2.42 pounds 

0.48 pound 


9.90 bushels 

717 pounds 

38.50 pounds 

23 gallons 

9 gallons 

0.033 pound 

6.17 pounds 

1 .49 pounds 


Beer 

Tea 

Coffee 

Cacao 



From 1895 to 1910 the use of the following 
foodstuffs per inhabitant, in Paris, has ascended 
48.2 per cent for fish, 4.7 for meats, 3.3. for but- 
ter, 20.7 for cheese, 35.5 for eggs, 135 for cider, 
27.9 for wines.^ 

On all sides are evidences that Frenchmen at 
large are better fed and for less money. The 
following table is instructive: 

1 Thery, oy. cU., p. 6«. 



210 FRANCE UNDER THE REPUBLIC 



COMPARATIVE PRICES OF COMESTIBLES 



1871 



1907 



Wheat 

Rye 

Corn 

Barley 

Oats 

Flour 

Potatoes . . . 
Rice....... 

Butter 

Sugar ...... 

Coffee...... 

Cacao 

Cheese 

Salted meat 

Beef 

Mutton 



$2.00 


per 


bus. 


$0.93 per bus. 


1.38 




" 


.97 


« 


(( 


1.37 


« 


« 


.97 


« 


(( 


.82 


" 


" 


.66 


« 


<( 


.61 


« 


(( 


.54 


" 


(( 


.043 


" 


lb. 


.018 


" lb. 


.55 




100 lbs. 


1.10 


" 100 lbs 


.04 




lb. 


.025 


" lb. 


.32 




iC 


.31 


" 


« 


.08 




" 


.03 


«( 


( 


.15 




<( 


.10 


it 


* 


.15 




« 


.17 


« 


it 


.16 




" 


.12 


« 


( 


.11 




<( 


.16 


" 


( 


.07 




« 


.075 


« 


( 


.08 




« 


.085 


" 


' 



At the same time wages have risen. In 1872 
farm-hands received $0.44 and other labourers 
$0.62 per day; in 1900 the average pay for non- 
trained workmen outside of Paris was about 
$0.84.^ The wages of artisans and trained work- 
men have risen from 1870 to 1900 in a propor- 
tion represented by 0.76 and 1.04, while the 
cost of food and lodging of the same persons has 
dropped from 1.05 to 1.00, and the buying 
power of wages, though these men work fewer 
hours, has increased from 0.72 in 1872 to 1.00 
in 1900.2 

A great change has also taken place in the 



^ Catalogue officiel de V Exposition universelle de Paris, vol. XVI. 
* Annuaire statistiquet 1909. 



THE NEW LIFE 



211 



matter of external well-being. In the use of 
clothing, it may be regretted that the dress of 
the people, especially in the provinces, has lost 
something of its quaintness and picturesque- 
ness; but this has been amply compensated by 
a better and larger provision of wearing ap- 
parel. The use of cotton per capita has in- 
creased from 5.94 pounds to 11.44 pounds; wool 
from 11.44 pounds to 12.76 pounds; silk has 
remained stationary. During the last fifteen 
years there has been an increase of 249,040,000 
pounds of textile raw material, devoted either 
to clothe the people or to make fine fabrics for 
exportation.^ What has greatly contributed to 
a better national clothing is the lower price of 
raw textile material.^ This and the general 
economic progress have put within the reach 
of the masses many things once the preroga- 
tives only of the well-to-do. Where the chil- 
dren of the poor were shoeless under the Em- 
pire, now most of them have shoes, and wooden 

^ Thery, op. cit, p. 176. 
2 COMPARATIVE PRICES OF TEXTILE MATERIAL PER POLT^D 





1871 


1907 


Wool 


$0.25 

.17 

.10 

.15 

6.36 


$0.21 

.16 

.08 

.09 

4.41 


Cotton. 


Stripped hemp 


Stripped flax 


Silk 





212 FRANCE UNDER THE REPUBLIC 

shoes are more and more discarded. Where 
watches were carried only by those in easy cir- 
cumstances, now not only operatives but even 
peasants have them. Bicycles have become 
very common. Motor-cycles and tricycles have 
also been popularised. Automobiles have been 
multiplied so that even people of moderate 
means own them. 

The Frenchman travels much more. While 
thirty-two years ago he averaged only 3.7 rides 
a year on the railroads, he now indulges in 6.7. 
Where he rode 81 miles, now he covers 133. 
Though railroad fares have been lowered, he 
spends now $1.88 a year instead of $1.36. The 
railroads now transport 7,701 pounds of mer- 
chandise for him instead of 3,680 pounds.* 
Travel for pleasure and for education has been 
promoted by the greater comfort of the cars, 
by the rapidity of the trains, and by a fine 
literature which interests the Frenchman in the 
beauty and the historic associations of his own 
land. Over two hundred and fifty syndicats 
d' initiative in the provinces^ make great efforts 
to encourage travel in their own parts of the 
country. The Club alpin frangais has called 
attention to the beauty of the mountainous 
districts and given a strong impetus to mountain- 

1 Thery, ibid., p. 222. » Le Siicle, Oct. 28. 1909. 



THE NEW LIFE 213 

climbing and sight-seeing. The Automobile 
Club has done a kindred work for the country 
at large. The Touring Club has inspired and 
facilitated travel, securing lower rates for its 
members, waging war upon poor hotels, and 
pointing out good ones, urging the authorities 
to improve roads, helping the State to build 
new ones, re-wooding denuded hills, and in 
many ways furthering the cause of intelligent, 
educational, and profitable touring. M. Mille- 
rand, Minister of Public Works, founded in his 
department of the executive the Office du ton- 
risme, thereby bringing the State to co-operate 
with all agencies to further travel at home. 

As a result of this movement, the Frenchman 
has come to discover his own country, and to 
be struck not only with the attractiveness of 
France, which has so thoroughly welded peoples 
of different affinities, but by the infinite charm 
of the social condition thereby created, the 
monuments which recall these great changes, 
and the beautiful scenery which often crowns 
the whole. He wishes to protect all this from 
the vandalism of commerce or from the blind 
utilitarianism of some industries. To that end 
was founded the Societe pour la protection des 
paysages de France, This association has suc- 
ceeded in having the Parliament establish a 



214 FRANCE UNDER THE REPUBLIC 

committee of artistic landscapes in every de- 
partment in order to preserve them. Further- 
more, the society makes a systematic opposi- 
tion to engineers who deface fine views or to 
vulgar advertisers who in every country spoil 
much of our pleasure. 

The Frenchman has broken through the bar- 
riers of a narrow nationalism. The tendencies 
of his mind have always been in the direction 
of an abstract universalism, but of late years he 
has manifested the most genuine interest in 
what other people do. Hence he has been open 
to foreign influences. Russia, Scandinavia, Ger- 
many, Great Britain, and the United States have 
touched his life most profoundly and in a multi- 
tude of directions. While this is true of high 
culture and of commerce, it is so to a remark- 
able extent with learned societies and other 
organisations which, whatever be their specific 
aims, create international good-will and amity. 
There are the Alliance franco-britannique, the 
Societe franco-ecossaise, the Societe d* etudes ita~ 
liennes, the Ligue franco-italienne, the Societe 
espagnole d' excursions, the Societe sinigo-japo- 
naise, and the Comite France-Amerique, and 
many others. There is quite a number of reall^^ 
international societies, such as the Societe 
d' etudes et de correspondance inter nationale, the 



THE NEW LIFE 215 

Societe d'echange international des enfants et des 
jeunes gens, the Societe Internationale des etudes 
de questions d^assistance, the Alliance universi- 
taire internationale, not to mention many others 
which constitute numerous personal and social 
ties between the Frenchman and representatives 
of other nationaUties. Home travel has led to 
more foreign travel. The Frenchman now visits 
other countries; he becomes now and then an 
explorer and even a globe-trotter. His pub- 
licists can speak more intelligently of world 
politics and of world interests. He has not 
only learned foreign languages, but he has been 
equally anxious to impart his own. If, by the 
side of the work done in the schools and lycees, 
he has the Societe pour la propagation des langues 
etrangeres in France, and the Societe des etudes 
des langues etrangeres, he has also the Alliance 
frangaise, whose efforts are to spread the French 
language in every part of the world. 

Education has become the prerogative of 
nearly every one. In thirty-three years the 
pupils able to read and write have risen from 
52,350 to 73,001; those having a better educa- 
tion from 176,388 to 208,012; those with a 
diploma of primary education from a small 
number^ to 6,226; bachelors of letters, of 

» 947 m 1878. 



216 FRANCE UNDER THE REPUBLIC 

science, or of any other secondary study from 
1,507 to 6,988.^ Life itself has become more 
educational by travel, military service, widely 
read literature, and the periodical press. The 
progress of the latter gives us many indices of 
wider aims and of a larger culture. Of the 84 
agricultural papers of to-day 56 were founded 
under the Republic. Of the 22 publications 
devoted to architecture 15 Were started since 
1870. Of the 62 papers devoted to associations 
45 were created under Republican rule; of the 
51 on fine arts 42; of the 54 on bibliography 38; 
of the 59 colonial papers 52; of the 61 on com- 
merce 39; of the 16 on cooking 14; of the 60 
papers and reviews upon political, social, and 
domestic economy 49; of the 16 women's papers 
13; of the 270 on finances 177; of the 76 on in- 
dustry 52; of the 96 on education 74; of the 32 
devoted to literature 29; of the 299 for medi- 
cine, surgery, and hygiene 225; of the 19 on 
metallurgy 10; of the 41 on music 28; of the 130 
Catholic papers 93; of the 203 reviews, literary, 
political, and of high culture, 134; and of the 84 
scientific papers 56,'^ The evidence of the prog- 
ress of widening and radiating interest may also 

1 Annuaire statistique, 1909. 

' Annuaire de la presse frangaise et Strangere, 1909. These statistics 
are not absolutely accurate; but when there was any doubt, the benefit 
of it was given to the publications issued before the Republic. 



THE NEW LIFE 217 

be seen in those annual publications devoted to 
a peculiar subject, as science, art, or life, like 
the Annee biologique, Annee psychologique, Annee 
politique^ Annee cartographique, Annee Indus- 
trielle, and scores of kindred publications, signifi- 
cant alike for the activities which they record, 
and for the serious interests which they keep 
up in a multitude of readers. All these facts 
point to the growth of a larger culture and in- 
telligence on the part of the French people. 
Few are the democracies which have witnessed 
such a deepening of their mental life in such a 
short time. 

With the progress just referred to has come 
a more specific knowledge in every direction. 
This has told potently upon sanitary laws and 
better provisions for general health. The Re- 
public recognises the right of the helpless to 
receive medical aid from society. The nursing 
of the poor, like that of the rich, is more and 
more done by trained persons. Medical science 
and skill are more available. From 1881 to 
1902 those professionally concerned with public 
health have increased from 25,914 to 40,605.* 
Medical and surgical societies contribute po- 
tently to the efl&ciency of this service. Public 
health has become a matter of national concern. 

* Annuaire statistique, 1909, 



218 FRANCE UNDER THE REPUBLIC 

Physical culture has rapidly won its way all 
over the country, notwithstanding the ascetic 
spirit of the historic Church. Gymnastic and 
sporting societies of all kinds have been formed 
to develop the body. Even those who, upon 
religious grounds, objected to this have them- 
selves been compelled to organise athletic or- 
ganisations and schools of physical culture to 
keep their young people. In all educational in- 
stitutions this physical training has now some 
place. A national organisation, La ligue fran- 
Qaise de V education physique, advocates the gospel 
of a methodic and rational physical education. 
Some consequences were bound to follow. 
One of them is the larger size of Frenchmen. 
The study of the measurements of conscripts 
from 1872 to 1911 leaves no doubt as to this. 



PERCENTAGE 


OF THE RELATIVE 
CONSCRIPTS 


HEIGHT 


OF 




lm.54 
TO 1.62 


Im. 
63 


1 m. 
64 


Im. 
65 


1.66 


1.67 

TO 

1.69 


1.70 

TO 

1.72 


1.73 

AND 
ABOVE 


1872 
1911 


31.7 
26.7 


7.4 
6.3 


7.4 
6.5 


7.7 
7.7 


7.3 
6.7 


16.7 
17.7 


12.4 
13.5 


10.0 

12.8 



One sees that the decrease from 1 m. 54 to 
1 m. 67 is constant and that there is a continuous 
gain from 1 m. 67 to the greatest height.^ 

^ Annuaire statistique, 1913. In 1872, conscripts under 1 m. 54 were 
not included in statistics, so that the writer does not give them in the 
report for 1911, 



THE NEW LIFE £19 

Another consequence of the new condition is 
a lower death-rate. This has been most visible 
in the diminution of infantile mortality. Doctor 
E. Earthier says that it was 42 per cent for the 
whole country from 1800 to 1874, and 18 per 
cent for legitimate and 24 per cent for illegiti- 
mate children from 1874 to 1900.^ 

Those dying under one year of age numbered 
147 per thousand in 1872, and 116 in 1906.2 
During the same period the death-rate for the 
nation decreased from 22.5 per thousand to 19.5. 
From 1872 to 1901 the population from 60 to 
79 years of age rose from 3,910,000 to 4,418,000, 
and that above 80 years from 267,000 to 352,000; 
in other words, sexagenarians and septuage- 
narians increased from 10.83 per cent of the total 
population to 11.50, and octogenarians and non- 
agenarians from 0.74 to 1.05.^ The total num- 
ber of deaths averaged 848,111 during the period 
of 1884 to 1891, while from 1899 to 1906 the 
average was only 785,523 — a difference of 
62,588 a year.^ 

Social conditions have also undergone great 
changes. While the former classes, not to say 
castes, still exist, there has been a process of 
social interpenetration which has introduced 

^ Pages libres, June 16, 1906. » Annuaire statistique, 1909. 

» Ihid. * Thery, op. dt., p. 826. 



220 FRANCE UNDER THE REPUBLIC 

Jewesses and Americans into the nobility, the 
sons of the people into the higher clergy, and 
new elements into the professional classes. Now 
the sons choose, more often than under the 
Empire, a profession other than that of their 
father; and when they have made a choice, they 
are not riveted to it for life. The school teach- 
ers and the professors, who previously seemed 
permanently chained to their calling until they 
were superannuated, now often become journal- 
ists, dramatic critics, lecturers, writers, or 
deputies. Philosophers find a field outside of 
the schools. Priests leave their church without 
calling forth the bitter and relentless persecu- 
tions of former days. Classes and professions 
do not, as in bygone days, hold a man forever; 
he may adjust himself to opportunities unknown 
to his predecessors. Though M. Bazin, in his 
La Terre qui meurt, deplores the fact that 
French peasants leave agricultural districts, 
they do so to improve their material, and often 
their moral, condition. The greater number of 
them are right in so doing. By his displace- 
ment the peasant learns something. If he re- 
turns to his hamlet, as a rule he has received a 
valuable schooling. The labourer at large may, 
if he chooses, join the labour organisations 
which have become numerous and influential. 



THE NEW LIFE 221 

Through them he may secure what formerly 
was out of his reach. 

The most prominent feature of French society 
during the last forty years has been the volun- 
tary socialisation of men in every realm, giving 
new hopes and new aspirations. This has been 
true of philosophers, psychologists, scientists, 
physicians, surgeons, educators, manufacturers, 
artists, writers, philanthropists, etc. These so- 
cieties constitute the most unmistakable evi- 
dences of the unparalleled efforts of Frenchmen 
and of their great united purpose in their sev- 
eral spheres. Everywhere work has become 
more co-operative and collective. Labour or- 
ganisations are only parts of this larger move- 
ment of co-ordinated action of groups of indi- 
viduals. Still the unions which band together 
masses of unreflective toilers, formerly accepting 
as a divine rule the mischievous iron hand that 
held them down, are a new phenomenon in 
French society. Labourers, conscious of their 
power, have endeavoured to rise by association. 
They have experimented w ith that principle upon 
a colossal scale, often making mistakes; not in- 
frequently they have been the victims of their 
leaders, but in the experience they have risen. 

The rise of these large organisations was not 
without peril for the government and for indi- 



222 FRANCE UNDER THE REPUBLIC 

vidual liberty. By the force of things these 
large bodies were bound to clash with the pow- 
ers that be. As was to be expected, there were 
contentions for proper adjustments which 
French journalists so easily call crises: the 
clerical crisis, the military crisis, the commer- 
cial crisis, the labour-union crisis, the vine- 
growers' crisis, the liquor-dealers' and saloon- 
keepers' crisis, and others. Great organisations 
in all countries have always, openly or secretly, 
aspired to lord it over political institutions. 
The clergy have been prominent in this respect. 
The army, or rather its chiefs, during the Drey- 
fus campaign, uttered threats not a few against 
the government; but they knew that soldiers 
were intensely patriotic as well as Republicans, 
so that these oflBcers remained loyal. Commer- 
cial men have acted as if commercial interests 
should be paramount and trade considerations 
should override other national issues. Most of 
the great labour-unions have shown consider- 
able unrest, as if they were not satisfied with 
the purpose for which they were organised, and 
wished to lay their hands upon the political 
machinery for their advantage. Even State 
servants formed unions which did not shrink 
from striking, and thereby paralysing the na- 
tional life. 



THE NEW LIFE 223 

Potent as the labour-unions are, they repre- 
sent only one-sixteenth of industrial labourers, 
and the Confederation generate du travail, the 
most militant body, constitutes only 5 per 
cent of the whole, and only a minority of the 
members of this organisation are revolutionary.^ 
At the same time it must be remembered that, 
if the nation approves trades-unions, it con- 
demns emphatically the dictatorial aspirations 
of some groups and the tyranny of others. 
Strong in their own sphere, they will arouse the 
whole nation against them as soon as they at- 
tempt to go beyond. Again, great organisa- 
tions will be a check upon one another, and will 
do for freedom what denominations have ac- 
complished in Protestant countries for religious 
liberty. With all the restrictions and tyranny 
which they have exercised, the individual toiler 
has a better chance in the struggle of life; and 
notwithstanding the despotism of numbers, in- 
dividuals have not been prevented from rising. 
Never had the country such a host of self-made 
men. They are to be seen in every walk of 
life, in the Church, the army, the universities, 
the studios of artists, the French Institute, and 
the most eminent positions of the land. It has 
been as easy for poor young Brunetiere to be- 

} Le Steele, Oct. 13, 1908; Le Temps, June 29, 1909. 



224 FRANCE UNDER THE REPUBLIC 

come the greatest critic of France as for the 
tanner boy, Felix Faure, to become its presi- 
dent. The road to distinction, through labour 
and personal worth, has never been wider, 
though in it, as before, are also the time-servers 
and politicians who find greater chances for 
the use of their peculiar talents. 

The fundamental working principle of politi- 
cal life has been also modified. Men do not 
look up as before to State officials, but State 
officials look up to them. The functionary is at 
every point concerned with the opinions of the 
masses, often more than with that of his chiefs. 
While in former days dealers went to great cen- 
tres to buy their goods and now drummers bring 
their wares to the merchant, at the present time 
government agents serve the citizen in his vil- 
lage or in his hamlet. The villager no longer 
goes to the county-seat to pay his taxes, but 
the tax-collector comes to him. Schools, post- 
offices, telegraphs and telephones, police head- 
quarters, justices of peace, hospitals, and kin- 
dred institutions are where men are. To the 
government of paternalism on behalf of the 
classes has succeeded a government of service 
for the masses. The privileges of the few with 
their attendant evils have become the boon of 
the many with similar evils indeed, but with 
the difference that now these evils can be at- 



THE NEW LIFE 225 

tacked freely in Parliament, in the courts, or in 
the press. 

The high achievement of the Republic is that, 
in the great grinding political machinery of 
France, man counts for more than at any other 
period of her history. Life means more bread 
and more material well-being, more social, more 
political, more economic freedom, and, taken all 
in all, more ideal. Citizens have more moral 
buoyancy, larger intellectual compass, a deeper 
and a clearer consciousness of their own worth. 
The tendency may have been to do too much 
for the lower classes; but one must admit that 
aristocracy has never had freer opportunities to 
lead its own wasteful, indolent, and superficial 
life. Like the nation, it has grown richer and 
in some ways better. Marriages with rich heir- 
esses, Jewish or American, have brought new 
blood and new moral energy among them. 
They do not now have the contempt of former 
days for work. Some of them have become 
leaders in great industries, and not a few have 
won distinction in other realms. According to 
Comte G. d'Avenel there has been an uncon- 
scious democratisation of the nobility.^ There 
has been among them a considerable infiltration 
of the moral ideas which have so deeply affected 
Republicans. Similarly, it is an encouraging 

* " Ce qu'il reste d'aristocratie," in Les Frangais de mon temps. 



226 FRANCE UNDER THE REPUBLIC 

fact that nobles of genuine moral worth, like 
M. de Mun, for instance, have never been more 
respected. 

With all its falterings, the present govern- 
ment is the least objectionable and the longest 
which the country has had since Louis XV, and 
the most progressive which the French people 
have ever known. When one examines the in- 
numerable evidences of the progress of the 
nation, one grows indignant at the ignorance or 
bad faith of the reactionaries who speak of its 
"decadence." The writer has asked some of 
them what period of French history they would 
choose in preference to that of to-day — a period 
in which a man of large culture and generous 
impulse would rather live. The reign of Louis 
XIV ? or that of Louis XV ? The Revolution ? 
The First Empire with its wars and its despot- 
ism? The Restauration with its blind and re- 
vengeful reactions.^ The grey, commonplace 
bourgeois reign of the Orleanists? The Second 
Empire, with the coup d'Etat, ending at Sedan 
with an interlude of eighteen years of an un- 
blushing absolutism and corruption ? No ! No ! 
In some way or other, they are all compelled to 
admit that Republican France of to-day stands 
upon a higher plane, is working out a better and 
a broader civilisation, notwithstanding all the 



THE NEW LIFE 227 

evils that there, as elsewhere, are the shadows 
in a beautiful picture. 

To the impertinent question which no intelli- 
gent student should ask, "Is France declining?" 
Max Nordau answered wisely: "There are in 
France certain social groups and classes which 
are absolutely declining. But this is fortunate 
for the country. France itself is rapidly pro- 
gressing, and is at present passing through one 
of the most brilliant periods of its history. 
Morally and intellectually France stands in the 
forefront among civilised nations. Its science, 
its literature, and its art are superior to most of 
them and inferior to none. France occupies 
now a position to which others will come later. 
The only dark point on its horizon might be 
the decrease of births. But here also France is 
a precursor. The same demographic phenom- 
ena follow inevitably the advance of civilisation. 
And when this is repeated elsewhere it ceases to 
be a source of anxiety. It is simply an expres- 
sion of the fact that the reason and foresight of 
the nation make themselves evident in a domain 
where a lower grade of civilisation permits blind 
instinct to decide. The Frenchman who is not 
proud of his nation must be a highly peculiar 
and ungrateful individual."^ 

* Boston Transcript, May 9, 1904. 



228 FRANCE UNDER THE REPUBLIC 

To the same question Edmund Gosse replied: 
"My answer is decidedly and emphatically, 
*No!' What does the word * decline' mean? 
Is it not an expression which scared people 
often use to conceal their fear of everything that 
is new, bold, and progressive ? The only declin- 
ing peoples are those who do not dare to make 
a change, who are always afraid to encourage 
new movements. Strong, powerful nations are 
always making new experiments, which cause 
the timid to tremble and cry out. Wherever we 
look around us in the world we find no nation of 
which it can more unjustly be said that it is in 
decline than France. In my opinion there is 
no country so full of intellectual buoyancy and 
hopefulness, no country which offers the ob- 
server so many sources of real life, and which so 
fascinates the thinker as France. Is France in 
decline ? If by decline you mean development, 
life's most painful metamorphosis — Yes! But 
if by decline you mean ennui, impotence, decline 
in the moral and intellectual temperature — a 
thousand times No!"^ There could be no bet- 
ter answer. 



CHAPTER XI 

MORAL INSTRUCTION IN FRENCH 
SCHOOLS 1 

WE have already referred to the remark- 
able work of French education. 
"Thanks," says M. Fouillee, "to a 
noble and generous mouvement. Republican 
France, at the end of the nineteenth century, has 
adorned herself with schools, as, after the terror 
of the year 1000, she adorned herself with 
churches." Faith in the power of the school has 
eclipsed, in many parts of the land, faith in the 
efficiency of the Church. The changes in the 
educational spirit are no less marked. The cen- 
tral aim of education, which was for so long the 
enlargement of the mind, has also become the 
direction of conduct and the development of 
character. 

It was said by the Conservatives that the 
freedom — which they call license — of the Re- 
public would be fatal to morality and religion. 
Whatever may have been the moral excesses of 
a period of transition, it is certain that there has 

^ Reprinted from The Educational Review, April, 1902. 
229 



£30 FRANCE UNDER THE REPUBLIC 

been awakened a sense of responsibility never 
before known in the history of France. One 
sees its expression in the multitude of organisa- 
tions having a philanthropic or a moral purpose; 
in the new tone in art; in polite literature; in the 
importance which moral and religious questions 
have come to assume. To this, more than to 
any other cause, must be ascribed the deepening 
religious seriousness visible in many parts of 
the country, and the great prominence of moral 
questions in the schools. 

Thirty-five years ago the Catholic Church had 
still virtual control of French education.^ Sym- 
bols of Catholic faith were found everywhere 
in school buildings. The catechism was on 
a par with arithmetic, and Roman Catholic 
prayers were recited several times a day, not- 
withstanding the presence of non-Catholics. So 
great was the power of the clergy that, in places 
not a few, the local priest became a real despot 
for the local teacher. This was an anachronism 
which could not last. In 1882 the Parliament — 
after long and stormy discussions — voted the 
secularisation of the common schools. Instead 
of the religious practices and the mechanical 

^ During the last days of the Empire the common-school teacher 
was trained, and compelled, to teach the Roman Catholic catechism, 
to learn to sing the plain chant, and to take organ lessons in view of 
the Catholic Church service. 




RAYMOND POINCAIRE 



MORAL INSTRUCTION 231 

teaching of the catechism, the teaching of 
morals was introduced, and great efforts were 
made, in a new way, for the improvement of 
character. This was not simply the liberation 
of the schools from ecclesiastical dominion, but 
also the assertion that under that regime they 
had failed in their moral education. As ex- 
pected, the clergy carried on a most violent 
campaign against the Parliament and pushed 
forward the extension of a vast system of 
parochial schools in opposition to the "atheistic" 
and the "godless" schools of the Republic.^ 

Sacrifice on account of principles is always 
beautiful. To have, by their own gifts, in 
the face of State-paid institutions, maintained 
schools which educate one-third of the children 
of the primary, and nearly one-half of the sec- 
ondary schools is no small achievement per- 
formed by the Catholics. With them moral 
teaching is almost always confounded with 
religious instruction, and morality is the un- 



^ Until the war the Catholic Church has continued her antagonism to 
the common schools, to the moral teaching in them, and to the teachers 
in such a way as to create bitter feelings on both sides. The bishops 
condemned Lavisse's Histoire de France, an impartial little history 
written by a great historian who is the soul of impartiality. These 
same bishops condemned the text-books of morals because there is 
nothing in them upon the supernatural or about "the doctrine of the 
original sin." To please them the government should eliminate all 
the books they disapprove; in other words, the bishops should have 
the upper hand. This French democracy will not allow. 



232 FRANCE UNDER THE REPUBLIC 

conditional surrender to the voice of the Church. 
As some one has said, this moral teaching can 
have serious and lasting value only for those 
who have faith and will keep it, but when 
confidence in the Church ceases the sense of 
moral imperativeness disappears. Fortunately, 
to supplement their schools, the Catholics have 
created many splendidly devised organisations 
to keep their young people in touch with them 
as they enter their apprenticeship or go to work. 
They are thus under a great moral and religious 
influence through the schools, even after they 
have left them. A Catholic writer ^ rightly 
regrets that these efforts have been "a work of 
preservation, rather than one of formation." 
This was to be expected. These schools con- 
tinue the old traditional education of the 
Church.^ Still we must remember that, by a 
kind of intellectual and moral infiltration, much 
of the life of the present time penetrates into 
those institutions in which mediaeval ideals are 
still so greatly cherished. 

Nothing served the common schools after 
1882 like the bitter attacks of the clergy. At 
first the people were anxious, but when the na- 
ture of the moral teaching was known they 

^ Turmann, Max, An sortir de VScole, p. 73. 

^ For the difference between the two methods, see Paul Lapie in La 
Science frangaise, vol, I, p. 51, 



MORAL INSTRUCTION 233 

gradually approved it. The teachers, at the 
outset frightened by their new duties, hesitated, 
but when their fitness to teach morals was 
assailed — not entirely without cause — they 
showed a noble determination to do what they 
could. The government founded a special nor- 
mal school for men at St. Cloud and one for 
women at Fontenay-aux-roses, to provide suit- 
able teachers of morals for all the normal, and 
thereby for the common schools of the country. 
The lack of competent teachers for this work 
was then, and is still to some extent, one of the 
difficulties in the way. Specific training in this 
matter is less important than character. As a 
whole, the body of French teachers has a high 
moral standing, because teaching is not for 
them a temporary makeshift, but a life. Were 
one to judge of their character by their small 
number of criminals the result would be most 
satisfactory, for the liberal professions reach 
an average of 6.35 per thousand where the 
teachers have only 1.58. As an evidence of 
their altruistic spirit, it is sufficient to say that 
no less than thirty-five thousand have, for 
several winters, taught without compensation 
in evening schools. 

The teachers showed their superiority by 
making a right use of the criticisms of their 



234 FRANCE UNDER THE REPUBLIC 

opponents. They admitted that French com- 
mon schools were only too often soulless teach- 
ing machines; they recognised the necessity of 
making them living centres of moral power. 
The pupil must learn no less, but his learning 
must express itself in terms of moral life. He 
must, at all cost, be protected from the great 
evils without, and strengthened in his life within. 
For the work of external moral preservation 
there were gradually founded numerous organ- 
isations, the mutualites scolaires, a kind of 
mutual-help society; the amicales, the grouping 
of former pupils for social ends; the patronages , 
to look after former pupils during their appren- 
ticeship; the classes de garde, to keep until eve- 
ning the children whose parents are at work 
during the day; anti-alcoholic leagues, societies 
for the protection of useful animals; literary 
entertainments, and other means of keeping 
former pupils in a wholesome moral atmosphere. 
In accordance with the doctrine of evolution, 
they endeavoured to shelter the prolonged in- 
fancy of man, when home and Church are in- 
adequate, with the influences of the schools. 
The great thing, however, was to strengthen the 
inner child. Without surrendering any effort for 
the mental development of the pupils — while 
increasing every provision to secure greater in- 



MORAL INSTRUCTION 235 

tellectual efficiency — great stress was laid upon 
their moral development by the very means the 
results of which so far had been mere intellec- 
tuality. Languages, mathematics, literature, 
history, and other studies, aside from their spe- 
cific aim, must at the same time yield a certain 
training of the will. Every exercise of the 
school must secure results in which, when pos- 
sible, thought, feeling, volition, and action 
would be but four inseparable steps to charac- 
ter.^ The teacher must always keep this great 
end in mind. He must insist upon merit rather 
than upon rank. In cases of misdemeanour he 
must make the pupil his own judge; when pos- 
sible he must be made to see the relations of 
the penalty to the fault. He must place around 
his pupils a healthy, inspiring moral atmos- 
phere. He must become the auxiliary of 
morality, as formerly he was the auxiliary of 
religion. It is clear that in thirty -five years a 
great change has taken place in French educa- 
tion in the direction of moral teaching. This 
must not be confounded, however, with the 
teaching of morals. 

^ In examining text-books used in classes of grammar the author found 
L. Dessaint and C. Jamart's book, La Langue frangaise. It is impos- 
sible for the philosophically minded reader not 16 be struck with the 
moral aim in doing this work. On page 304 the 87 subjects of com- 
position that are given tend in a large way to turn the minds of the 
pupils toward moral questions. 



236 FRANCE UNDER THE REPUBLIC 

When this branch of instruction was inaugu- 
rated in France, the country had the good for- 
tune to have the programme formulated by 
competent men in the Ministry of Education — 
men who thoroughly studied the difficult prob- 
lem. These, in turn, received the co-operation 
of some of the best minds of France in the 
preparation of text-books. Among these writers 
we read the names of Paul Janet, A. Mezieres, 
Paul Bert, Abbe de Broglie, G. Compayre, 
Mme. Coignet, Henry Greville, Henry Marion, 
Ch. Renouvier, Jules Simon, Jules Steeg — men 
and women foremost in the literary and the 
philosophical world. They put into these books, 
each one in his own way, the fundamental prin- 
ciples of morality. They gave expression to the 
national conscience in a didactic form. Thus 
the Parliament decreed that the moral education 
of 6,000,000 French children should be at- 
tempted by 124,000 teachers;^ specialists for- 
mulated an ideal programme; the teachers did 
much to meet the demands of this new depar- 
ture, and conspicuous writers admirably stated 
in their books various ways to reach a common 
goal. 

Morals in the schools are not always taught 
from books, but sometimes by brief, earnest 

^ Izoulet, Jean, La citi moderne, p. 471. 



MORAL INSTRUCTION 237 

talks, prepared by the teacher from the books. 
They are imparted to children from five to seven 
in a mere oral form by the simplest way possible. 
Here the teaching does not go further than to 
say that this act is right and that is wrong. 
The great end is intensive moral culture by 
emotions. AVith the other classes the greater 
number of teachers use books. In the elemen- 
tary primary class, from seven to nine, instruc- 
tion is generally by means of narratives, illus- 
trations, and quotations bearing upon the 
immediate relations of the pupils among them- 
selves. The effort is not so much to enlighten 
the moral consciousness as to secure the imme- 
diate introduction of principles into life. This 
instruction must be in touch with events in the 
daily life^ of the pupils. The programme of 
Jules Ferry puts it as follows: 

The teacher must use concrete examples and appeals 
to the immediate experience of the children in order to de- 
velop in them moral emotions and inspire them with feel- 
ings of admiration for the universal order, — with religious 
feelings by calling their attention to scenery of great 
natural beauty, — with feelings of charity by pointing out 
to them sufferings to relieve, giving thereby some real 
act of charity to accomplish with discretion, — with feel- 
ings of gratitude and sympathy by the account of a 
courageous deed, or by a visit to a charitable institution, 
etc.i 

^ Programmes officiels du 27 juillet, 1882. 



^38 FRANCE UNDER THE REPUBLIC 

In the middle primary class, from nine to 
eleven, the programme centres upon duties 
toward parents, servants, classmates, the father- 
land, and God. The method used with the 
preceding class is continued, but with more 
order and precision. Here again one is im- 
pressed with the same intense purpose of moral 
utility which we have already noticed. In the 
superior primary class — that is, from eleven to 
thirteen — the work includes the study of ele- 
mentary principles of morality, concluded with 
a special study of social morality. In the sec- 
ondary schools great stress is laid upon moral 
education,^ but the teaching of morals has also 
its place. Here the scope might be stated as 
follows: primary moral notions; domestic, social, 
and personal duties. All this remains intensely 
practical and even dogmatic. In the last year 
of lycee and college work ethics constitutes an 
invaluable part of the course of philosophy. 

The text-books used in this work are intended 
for a certain stage of mental development, that 
is, for some definite classes. Some are also for 
candidates to normal schools,^ for teachers, for 
families,^ and for general moral culture.* In 

^ Croiset, Alfred, USducation morale dans VumversitS, Paris, 1901. 
2 Abbe de Broglie, Dieu, la conscience, le devoir, Paris, 1889; A. Pierre 
and A. Martin, Cours de trwrale tkSorique et pratique, Paris, 1901. 
' Manuel, G., Nonveau livre de morale pratique, Paris, 1901. 
* Dugard, M., La culture morale. 



MORAL INSTRUCTION 239 

many cases they combine morals and civics, and 
not infrequently the rudiments of common law. 
One of the text-books greatly used^ gives (1) 
moral precepts; (2) stories illustrating them; (3) 
a vocabulary of the most difficult words used; 
(4) questions to see whether the pupil has under- 
stood well, or to drive the precepts home; (5) 
compositions which, in their own way, serve a 
similar purpose. Another^ proceeds in a similar 
manner, but its contents are so arranged as to be 
distributed through the months of the school 
year. October is devoted to the family, No- 
vember to the school, December and January to 
the fatherland, and so on to June, which deals 
with responsibility, habit, sanctions of the 
moral law, duties toward God, and the immor- 
tality of the soul. The various text-books de- 
voted to higher forms of primary teaching of 
morals are much more substantial. In addition 
to clear expositions of the subject there are ref- 
erences to well-known passages of literature to 
illustrate a point. Thus in the chapter on con- 
science, several refer to Hugo's poem. La Con- 
science.^ Some are rich in brilliant quotations 
of thoughts and maxims from all literatures, 

^ Laloi, Pierre, Vannee d' instruction morale et civique^ Paris, 1900. 

* Bailly and Dodey, Morale pratique de Vecolier, Paris, 1896. 

• Lapeyre, F., Lemons d'instruction morale, Paris, 1901; Pavette, O., La 
morale mise d la jportee des enfants, Paris, 1901. 



240 FRANCE UNDER THE REPUBLIC 

and others, like the Httle book of Paul Janet,^ 
have clear-cut definitions which greatly facili- 
tate the grasping of moral distinctions. The 
books for lycees and colleges are remarkable in 
this respect.^ One of the best books in this 
collection gives,^ after each chapter, a resume in 
brief, related propositions which make the book 
luminous. Another* has many tabular views 
exhibiting, side by side, the rights as well as 
the duties of the child, and three synoptical 
views of those duties, so arranged as to be easily 
remembered in their interrelations. Still an- 
other^ closes each chapter with resolutions. 
The manuals devoted to ethics have a more 
speculative character, but the books just re- 
ferred to are devoted to morality as an art and 
not as a science. It is not to be understood that 
these books are all equally satisfactory; some 
are childish, superficial, or are badly printed 
and illustrated; others, very few indeed, are 
anti-religious, but, as a whole, they represent a 
fine body of pedagogic literature. The impres- 
sion left by the series is their concrete character, 
their variety, their simplicity, and the moral 
earnestness of the writers. 

^ Petits Hements de jnorale, Paris, 1884. 

2 Pontsevrez, Cours de morale pratique, Paris, 1896; Adam, Ch., Cours 
de morale pratique, Paris, 1893. 

2 Gerard, J., Morale, Delagrave, Paris. 

* Cure and Houzelle, Lemons de morale, Paris, 1900. 

' Pavette, O., op. cit. 



MORAL INSTRUCTION 241 

It is impossible that such books, from so many 
sources and such varied inspiration, should have 
that unity of moral conception which would 
satisfy those who place all ethical considerations 
above that of individual or social utility. The 
great diversity, however, is more often one of 
verbal expression than of real practical differ- 
ence. Not infrequently the strong political or 
religious bias of a writer gives a slightly one-sided 
colouring to his statements. Some are greatly 
concerned about certain national tendencies. 
One, alarmed by the internationalism of Social- 
ists, lays great emphasis upon the duties of pa- 
triotism; another has at heart the overthrow of 
traditional superstitions. One is impressed with 
the urgent necessity of opposing alcoholism with 
new vigour; and another, having seen the evil of 
religious bigotry, insists upon the duty of toler- 
ation. Almost all have laid special stress upon 
particular points, and only a few have neglected 
important ones. The remarkable fact is the 
quasi-unanimity as to what acts are moral and 
what are not. While the morals taught are 
often placed upon empirical grounds, and should 
be, the programme demands that the teachers 
should assert in the classroom ''the imperative 
and disinterested character of duty." ^ This 
provision — if we are to judge from the text- 

* Programmes officiels du 27 juillet, 1882. 



242 FRANCE UNDER THE REPUBLIC 

books — is not always carried out, but when 
the imperativeness of this or that particular act 
is concerned, there is absolute unanimity. It 
cannot be doubted that these text-books have 
a clearer ring of the categorical imperative than 
those taught in the parochial schools. In Janu- 
ary (1901), Deputy Trouillot, in the French 
Parliament, called attention to cases of scanda- 
lous casuistry in a Latin manual used in sixty- 
seven Catholic seminaries of France. A Roman 
Catholic priest, member of the Parliament, Abbe 
Gayraud, dared to defend publicly mental 
reservations and the subterfuges of casuistry. 
He made the statement that falsehoods are 
allowable, provided they hurt no one. In the 
text-books of secular education which the writer 
has seen there is a positiveness in reference to 
right and wrong acts — no middle ground — 
which is a contrast to the equivocations in the 
work assailed by Deputy Trouillot. As a whole, 
were the ideals of moral life imparted by these 
text-books compared with those set forth by the 
Founder of Christianity, one could not escape 
the conclusion that they are very much alike, 
not to say identical.^ 

^ Jules Ferry was in favour of having taught in the schools "Our 
Duties toward God," and as a matter of fact that subject was taught; 
but he was unwilling to have this inserted into the law of 1882, lest 
the bishops should take advantage of it for the purpose of interfering 
with the schools. (Lanesson, J.-L. de, Le Siecle, 1909.) 



MORAL INSTRUCTION 243 

This brings us to the rehgious aspect of this 
teaching of morals. Indeed, "rehgious instruc- 
tion" so-called is forbidden by law, but ob- 
viously the French legislators gave to the word 
''religious" a peculiar sense. By it, they cer- 
tainly meant to do away with clerical interfer- 
ence, with the teaching of a truncated religious 
history, with a denominational catechism, the 
Roman Catholic prayers, and other religious 
features associated with Catholicism. Some of 
the legislators wished, even, to eliminate the 
word "God" from all text-books, but they 
failed. That the measure was not anti-religious 
is evident from the fact that the law distinctly 
states that the schools shall be closed Sundays 
and Thursdays so that the children may, if their 
parents wish, receive religious instruction in the 
churches.^ Another proof is the oflScial doctrine 
of the State, which reads as follows: 

The teacher is not to give a course of instruction ex 
professo upon the nature and attributes of God. His les- 
sons for all must be confined to two points: First, he 
teaches his pupils not to pronounce lightly the name of 
God; he associates closely in their mind the idea of a First 
Cause and a Perfect Being with feelings of respect and 

* All the children of the parochial schools and a large part of those 
from the common schools attend the Catholic Sunday and Thursday- 
schools, where, at least for a part of the year, they study the cate- 
chism. The Protestants have about seventy thousand children in 
their Sunday and Thursday schools. • 



244 FRANCE UNDER THE REPUBLIC 

veneration; he accustoms each of them to give to this 
notion of God the same respect, even though that should 
be different from the teacher's own convictions. Sec- 
ondly, and independently from the special instructions of 
different denominations, the teacher will endeavour to 
have the child understand and feel that the first homage 
which he owes to God is obedience to his laws, such as 
they are revealed to him by his conscience and his reason.* 

After this one is not astonished to hear Pro- 
fessor Buisson, of the University of Paris, when 
taking up the gauntlet about the "godless 
schools," exclaim: "Our schools are schools 
without priests, but not schools without God." 
Certainly they are not without God, though the 
theistic position is not so absolute as it would 
seem. In twenty text-books of morals, chosen 
at random, sixteen teach the existence of God 
and duties toward Him. The four remaining 
ones might be viewed by some as a concession to 
radicalism, though more properly they should 
be considered as honourable attempts to place 
the teaching of morals upon a basis absolutely 
independent of religion, without any hostility 
toward it. One cannot say as much of the 
Christological attitude of all these writers. Ad- 
mitting that in such matters one is justified in 

^Comte G. d'Avenel, a distinguished Catholic, speaking of moral 
teachings in the schools, says: *' There is no public school where is 
taught as to 'good' and 'evil' anything else than what is found in the 
catechism." {Les Frangais de mon temps, p. 212.) 



MORAL INSTRUCTION 245 

taking a purely human view of the Christ, it 
seems absolutely unscientific for those who speak 
historically of morals to avoid all references 
to him. The men who quote profusely Plato, 
Aristotle, Epictetus, La Fontaine, Voltaire, 
Rousseau, and Rabelais refrain even from the 
least allusion to Jesus, whom such radical think- 
ers as John Stuart Mill and Renan proclaimed 
the greatest moral teacher of all times. Most 
of them,^ however, strengthen their moral teach- 
ing with the theistic idea, and several text-books 
approve external worship and speak of prayer. 
This teaching derives additional importance 
from the fact that, in another way, it is also 
given in the classes of philosophy. The changes 
in this realm have been numerous, the old spi- 
ritualisme, which was taught often by material- 
ists, has been replaced by neo-Kantism taught 
by ideaUsts. The statement in the official pro- 
gramme has been but slightly modified, but it is 
taught in a new spirit. Duty, moral freedom, 
God, and immortality have remained central 
in the philosophical teaching of the secondary 
schools, and whatever the churches may wish to 
add to these cardinal facts, they are the corner- 
stones of religion. Are not the following ques- 

^ These statements refer only to the twenty text-books examined by 
the writer. 



M6 FRANCE UNDER THE REPUBLIC 

tions, wliich were given for admission to the 
Superior Normal School of Sevres, religious? 
"'State the principal reasons which warrant us 
in hoping for another life." *'Is God revealed 
to our reason, or apprehended by our feelings?" 
''Religious duties." "Providence." ''The Ex- 
istence of God." "Relations of godliness to 
virtue." To teach the existence of a God who 
finds pleasure in seeing men obey the moral law, 
to cultivate respect and reverence for that God, 
is certainly religious in the largest sense of the 
term.^ Of course there are teachers who eschew 
this part of the work — and many of them; 
others do it poorly, but the majority do it. 
Almost all the teachers think that a mere in- 
tellectual training, without the moral, is in- 
adequate, and many hold that a moral educa- 
tion without a theistic foundation, or other 
religious concomitant, is weak and frail. 

This tendency has been so pronounced that 
already a reaction is in sight. Among other 
signs of it are the recent meeting of a teachers' 

^When some time ago the writer read some extracts from French 
text-books of morals in Carne^e Hall in New York, several journalists 
stated that the citizens of the Empire State would not tolerate so much 
religious teaching in the public schools. Professor Barrett Wendell, 
after visiting the lycee of Lille, where he saw clergymen teaching re- 
ligion, said: " Even under this extremely anti-clerical government, it 
proved there was a degree of dogmatic teaching at the expense of the 
State, which would not be tolerated by the public opinion of any city 
in America." {The France of To-day, p. 39.) : 



MORAL INSTRUCTION 247 

association in Bordeaux and one of the Ligiie 
pour V enseignement in Caen, when resolutions 
were passed urging that that part of moral in- 
struction referring to God be dropped. There 
can be no better proof of the religious value of 
this education than the opposition of radicalism. 
A Catholic writer, not friendly toward these 
schools, referring to the place of God in this 
education, calls it "the share of the Divine."^ 
Another writer ascribes to this teaching that 
ideal justice which is the soul of religion.^ M. 
Paul Sabatier says: '* Thanks to the teaching of 
morals, there is being constituted, little by little, 
among us a kind of lay church. It is a reforma- 
tion, true, deep, noiseless, outside of the churches 
but not against them." 

It is difficult to gauge the results of a work like 
this. After centuries of experience, there are 
still those who question the moral influence of 
the Church, of science, and of art. There are 
those who view this experiment as a failure 
because they had expected sudden moral trans- 
formations, which are impossible. The Catho- 
lic clergy condemned the system before it had 
been tried in one single school. The Due de 
Broglie attacked it^ most violently, insisting 

^ Revue des Deux Mondes, 15 juin, 1898. 
' Jacob, B., Pour Vecole laique, p. 33. 
' Histoire et politique, 1897, p. 435. 



£48 FRANCE UNDER THE REPUBLIC 

that the "godless schools" were already showing 
their baneful fruition in the alarming increase 
in the number of youthful criminals. 

When it is said that the morals taught in the 
schools are powerless because they lack theoreti- 
cal unity and Church help, the answer might be 
that it is impossible to do more poorly than they 
with all their adjuncts. The writer does not 
underrate the advantages of teaching morals 
with the support of a historic religion, but that 
can no longer be done in France. Again, it 
seems to him that a system of morals resting 
upon the theistic idea is more efficient than the 
one which makes the theistic idea stand upon 
the categorical imperative, but even this view of 
morals can no longer be pressed in a country 
in which the philosophers stand by the Critique 
of the Practical Reason of Kant. They insist 
that morality does not depend upon the idea of 
God, but that the idea of God rests upon the 
sense of oughtness in us. This point of view 
cannot be taken by all, for many teach a utili- 
tarian morality. Obviously, it is impossible to 
secure theoretical unity, but a practical one is 
possible. Again, the teachers do not all show 
the same spirit and zeal, but, as a whole, the 
essential parts of the programmes are fairly 
carried out. 



MORAL INSTRUCTION 249 

After making allowances for necessary im- 
perfections, some practical results must follow. 
The teachers dispel an enormous amount of 
moral ignorance, a result of no mean importance. 
They assert the merits and demerits of certain 
acts which, in the mind of the pupils, become 
forces of moral suggestion. With this comes 
either the quickening of sympathy for moral, 
or of aversion for unmoral and immoral, acts. 
This is embodied in life by the continued effort 
to transform all this thinking and feeling into 
moral energy. There is, above all, the constant 
inspiration of higher ideals. Higher moral ideas 
and ideals must necessarily act as determinants 
of feelings and volitions for a higher life. 

It should be remembered that this teaching 
is correlated with a general ensemble of efforts 
and hfe described at the outset of this chapter; 
an ensemble which intensifies the power of this 
teaching of morals. The writer has not the 
least hesitancy in admitting that the practical 
results have not come up to the original theoreti- 
cal expectations, but this is also the case with the 
parochial schools. Honest teachers on both 
sides have not failed to express their disappoint- 
ment at the results of their work. However, 
numerous investigations have shown tangible 
results. 



250 FRANCE UNDER THE REPUBLIC 

In 1889 Dean Lichtenberger, of the Faculty 
of Protestant Theology of Paris, examined 558 
reports from as many inspectors of schools from 
every part of the country. The variety of the 
reports and the discriminating sincerity of the 
inspectors, so severe toward their own work, 
lead one to see how Dean Lichtenberger could 
reach no other conclusion than that the work 
represented "a manifest progress." Numerous 
correspondents have spoken in a similar manner. 
One of them, inspector over two hundred schools, 
writes: "The teaching of morals gives results 
more and more satisfactory. It is not perfect 
as yet, but progress has been made which is an 
encouragement to persevere." Another, speak- 
ing of the fruits of this education, says: "I know 
men who have had no other training than that 
of the common schools, and yet men who, by 
their intelligence and their moral elevation, are 
certainly among the greatest personal forces of 
modern France." A distinguished writer says: 
*'We have already some admirable results. I 
need not tell you that they are extremely varia- 
ble. . . . The reaction upon the teachers them- 
selves has been superb. They have, at least 
many among them, realised the part which they 
must play as educators." 

The full value of this new departure in French 



MORAL INSTRUCTION 251 

schools cannot as yet be gauged by correspond- 
ing results. It is probable that its wisdom will 
not be absolutely demonstrated by adequate 
returns until the time when the pupils, trained 
in the schools, have homes of their own, and in 
the education of their children co-operate with 
the schools — until the time when the Church, 
ceasing her opposition, and supplementing the 
work of the schools, gives them an honest sup- 
port. Meanwhile, with their manifest imper- 
fections, the schools have become institutions, 
not only to make the pupils think, but think 
right, then feel right, then will right, then do 
right, and finally be right, the permanence of 
which is character. The number of those who 
will go through all the stages of this ethical 
ascent may not be great at first, but multitudes 
will doubtless be lifted up, morally, a little 
higher. Later on, this great moral lever, work- 
ing with cumulative force, will direct the ener- 
gies which make for the better life of France. 



CHAPTER XII 

THE DISPERSION OF THE UNAUTHOR- 
ISED RELIGIOUS ORDERS 

WE have endeavoured to show that the 
CathoHc Church of France has never 
had more earnestness in its priesthood, 
more culture and humanitarianism in its hfe, 
than now.^ This can scarcely be said, however, 
of the regular clergy, i, e,, the members of mo- 
nastic organisations whose action has constantly 
generated national storms. In 1900 there were, 
in France, 1,663 orders, of which 152 were for 
men and 1,511 for women. The total member- 
ship was 190,000,^ an increase of 130,000 since 
the time preceding the French Revolution, when 
already they were considered a national burden.^ 
An examination of the Concordat and of the 
Organic Articles leaves no doubt that the orders 
were altogether excluded.^ 

1 See Chap. IX. 

* Waldeck-Rousseau, Associations et congregations, p. iii. 

^ See Taine, H., Les origines de la France contemporaine, vol. I, p. 17 
et seq. 

^ Debidour, A., Histoire des rapports de VEglise et de VEtat de 1789 d 
1870, p. 220. Pere Du Lac admits that neither Napoleon nor Pius VII 
referred to the orders, and that to have allowed them to return would 

252 



RELIGIOUS ORDERS 253 

They first managed, however, by personal 
patronage to secure authorisation for humble 
philanthropic work, and later on they slowly 
penetrated into the country which, as a whole, 
feared them. Their gradual return shows that 
it was not a part of the Concordat, whose pro- 
visions were enforced at once. As we have 
already said, were the growth of the regular 
clergy to be taken as an index of religious 
progress one could not deny that the Republic 
has been more favourable to religion than pre- 
ceding governments.^ 

All orders have ascetic rules of greater or less 
rigidity, but most of them make an absolute 
surrender of self to their superior. In a dis- 
course delivered in Paris, in 1868, upon '"Monks 
and their Social Function," Pere Didon waxes 
eloquent as he speaks of what the monastic 
gives up. He says: "'You protest, perhaps. I 
shudder, myself. Well, yes. Personality itself 
shall be taken from me, like the rest, with my 
liberty; and after having repudiated all my be- 
longings, having renounced chaste love, the 
vow of obedience which I take shall leave me 

have aroused the Republicans to revolt. There can be no better proofs 
than those stated by the celebrated Jesuit that the orders were not 
included in the Concordat. (See Pere Du Lac, Jesuites, p. 138 et seq.) 
^ Pere Du Lac admits that the Jesuits were able to establish 13 
colleges during the Second Republic, and 10 under the present one, 
while under the Empire they founded only 3. (Op. cit, p. 210.) 



254 FRANCE UNDER THE REPUBLIC 

only slavery. The monk is a slave, indeed, and 
it is his last name. I mistake, there is one more 
beautiful: the monk is less than a slave ... he 
is a cadaver, perinde ac cadaver.''^ By the side 
of this renunciation of the monk there is the 
omnipotence of his superior. One trembles at 
the thought of an imperfect use of such power. 
In 1872 Pere Didon, without any warning or 
hearing, was ordered from Paris, where he was 
most popular, to Havre as a punishment.^ In 
1880, at the height of his popularity, he was 
summoned to Rome by his superior; and there 
and then, without any explanation, or chance to 
defend himself, he — one of the ablest orators 
of Europe — was sent in disgrace to a poor con- 
vent of Corsica.^ When his mother died calling 
for him, and calling to the end, he was refused 
permission to go to her. At last the superior 
yielded, but it was too late; for the great orator 
reached the old home three days after her 
death.* 

As a rule orders are very zealous. One su- 
perb form of their service is that for the poor, 
the sick, the infirm, and the incurable. The 
"Little Sisters of the Poor" and others engaged 
in this ministry enjoy great popular respect and 

I'Pere Raynaud, Le Pere Didon, p. 56. ^ Ibid., p. 109. 

? Ibid., p. 204; Lettres du Pere Didon a un ami, p. 28. 
* Didon, Lettres, p. 43. 



RELIGIOUS ORDERS ^55 

love. In a general way the heroic note is domi- 
nant in their lives. Their missions, in zeal, in 
consecration, in the variety of efforts, in the 
number of their martyrs, are nothing short of 
remarkable. Their missionaries have rendered 
signal services to French expansion,^ but the 
government has more than liberally compen- 
sated them, and in some cases — in China, for 
instance — has sustained them in most unfair 
claims.^ For generations they have given it 
protection in all lands, not to speak of subsidies. 
The public, however, has come to recognise that 
the protectorate of Catholic missions is not in- 
frequently detrimental to the good name of the 
country. When this is brought to the attention 
of missionaries they answer that they are in 
the foreign field to advance, not the interest of 
France, but that of religion. That is true, but, 
such being the case, they should not ask funds 
for a work which they do not do. 

Many of the orders lay stress upon the work 
of education. Giving up that of charities, and 
in a measure that of missions, they have recog- 
nised that schools were the best avenues to the 
recovery of their former power. They opened 

^ Waldeck-Rousseau, ibid., p. 300 ; Bonet-Maury, G., Christianisme et 
civilisation, pp. 1-86. 

2 Guyot, Y., Le hilan social et politique de VEglise, p. 307; Lanes- 
son, J.-L. de, Les missions et leur jprotectorat, pp. 23, 29, and 33. 



256 FRANCE UNDER THE REPUBLIC 

schools of all kinds which, owing to their relig- 
ious, social, and political influences, had success, 
— success of numbers, and success in securing 
diplomas which are granted on examination by 
the government. Many of these institutions, 
however, have been hothouses for candidates 
for diplomas. They were carried on by the 
unauthorised orders, which, wherever they have 
established themselves, have done their utmost 
to wreck the common schools. They have al- 
ways caused Free-thinkers, Jews, and Protes- 
tants to appear as if they were traitors to the 
country, and guilty of heinous forms of evil. 
If the celebrated Dominican preacher, Pere 
Monsabre, eulogised the Inquisition at Notre 
Dame of Paris,^ in the schools they virtually 
approved the Massacre of Saint Bartholomew's 
Day, the Inquisition, and the Revocation of the 
Edict of Nantes.^ In one of their text-books 
Protestants, and not Catholics, were represented 
as the cause of this revocation. The French 
Revolution is never placed before their pupils 
except upon its most horrible side. There has 
always been an element of unfairness in dealing 
historically with those who opposed them, or in 
their competition with the State. They stealth- 

^ Loyson, H., Ni clSricaux, ni athSes, p. 140. 
* Rambaud, Jules Ferry, p. 110. 



RELIGIOUS ORDERS 257 

ily but surely laid their hands upon the teaching 
in forty-nine of the theological seminaries of 
the country.^ Thus, tolerated at first because 
of charitable work, they seized upon the educa- 
tion of laymen and finally upon that of the 
national clergy. This was a double violation 
of the Concordat, which contemplated no mo- 
nastics, Gallican professors, Gallican pupils, 
Gallican doctrine. 

They gradually extended their efforts in an- 
other direction. They consecrated a large part 
of their energy to revivalism; they held missions 
in the State churches, and succeeded in many 
instances in putting the secular, i. e,, the parish, 
priest in the background. These men in open 
revolt against the laws of the country took pos- 
session of national pulpits and, besides, opened 
chapels competing with the churches, often win- 
ning the aristocratic and the rich.^ In Paris, by 
the side of seventy parish churches, they had five 
hundred and eleven chapels and churches;^ but 
few of these men were ready to go to help the 
poor, overburdened parish priests in desolate 
mountainous districts. When it comes to pure 
disinterested motives, the people at large have 
more confidence in the quiet and humble manner 

^ Trouillot, Pour Vidie Idique, p. 38. 

2 Narfon, op. ciL, p. 166; Waldeck-Rousseau, op. cit., pp. 322 and 323. 

* Trouillot, op. dt, p. 35. 



258 FRANCE UNDER THE REPUBLIC 

of the parish priest than in the more spectacular 
acts of the monks. ^ 

The enterprises of the orders are quite va- 
rious, and some of them are far from religious. 
There are those which have rendered themselves 
conspicuous as distillers and merchants. Their 
well-known liquors — ^ benedictine, chartreuse,^ 
redemptorine, and trappistine — do not suggest 
spiritual attainments. The Carthusians alone 
paid $400,000 a year as excise taxes. They 
have many pious goods, and some which are 
not pious, to which they affix religious names — 
patent-medicines, for instance. Some have not 
hesitated to make promises for these drugs 
which outshine all the claims of our secular 
patent-medicine venders. Among all the orders 
there was an evident attempt almost everywhere 
to acquire property by all means. They have 
left the impression of unusual skill, not to say 
unscrupulousness, in avoiding the payment of 
taxes. There were also circulated papers con- 
taining hints and methods to will property to 
monks and nuns in spite of the law.^ By the 

* A poor priest, going on duty in a third-class car, is reported to have 
said to a monk starting with a first-class ticket for a rich watering- 
place: "It is you that have made the vow of poverty, but it is I that 
practise it." (Narfon, oj}. cit., p. 349.) 

2 In 1901 the amount of chartreuse made is said to have been 400,000 
gallons. (Baedeker, Sud-Est de la France, p. 168.) 

' Brisson, Discours. 



RELIGIOUS ORDERS 259 

side of their most beautiful work one witnesses 
the most shocking acts. Thus, those who have 
seen the labours of the Assumptionists in St. 
Pierre and Miquelon, among deep-sea fisher- 
men, could never withhold admiration for their 
unlimited devotion to one of the most pitiable 
classes of Frenchmen, while not countenancing 
for an instant the narrowness and fanaticism of 
the Assumptionists of France.^ Their paper, 
La Croix, commenting upon three days of most 
disgraceful riots against the Jews in the capital 
of Algeria, said: *'The Christ, indeed, reigned in 
Algiers during three days." Pere Bailly, their 
superior, after the second condemnation of 
Dreyfus at Rennes, wrote in the same paper 
that this second verdict must be ascribed to 
the miraculous intervention of the Virgin.^ 

As a rule the orders have not that philosophi- 
cal and scientific culture which confers upon self- 
surrender the highest value for social and re- 
ligious beneficence. The attempt of Pere Du 
Lac to show that the Jesuits have been, and 
are still, friendly to science leads one to question 
whether that gentleman, as well as his fellow 
monks, has an adequate sense of what that 
word has come to mean in the modern world.^ 



^ Narfon, op. cit., p. 292. * Guyot, Le hilan, etc., p. 165. 

' Jesuites, p. 260. 



260 FRANCE UNDER THE REPUBLIC 

Neither do they conceal their imfriendhness to 
independent research, to free science, and to 
all the great sources of modern enlightenment, 
though they have among them erudite men, 
eminent scholars, and scientists of some repute. 
They cultivate mathematics and astronomy, 
safe sciences from their point of view; but they 
have no sympathy with the larger scientific 
ideal to understand all things and to probe all 
things. 

The statement of Pere Du Lac, that the rules 
of his order forbid its members political inter- 
ference,^ will convince no one. The monks 
have exercised such political action that Pere 
Maumus, of Paris, endeavoured to bring them 
back to their true ministry when he said: ''Our 
mission is not to cause deputies to be elected; 
we have to save souls and to spread the kingdom 
of Jesus Christ." No one acquainted with hu- 
man nature could have expected to hear the 
praises of the Republic from their lips. Dis- 
paragement of the government was the most 
pronounced tendency of their life. It showed 
itself wherever we could see them, hear them, 
or read their utterances. Everything was out 
of joint in the French democracy, and, to please 
them, they should have been allowed to set it 

1 Ibid., p. 212. 



RELIGIOUS ORDERS 261 

right. They toil, they say, for a society founded 
not on the will of man, but of God, that is in 
reality upon the will of the Pope, though at 
times they do not hesitate to disobey him.^ 
Those men who claim to be Catholics, whose 
mission is to make the brotherhood of man a 
reality, are the narrowest of nationalists, and 
the most militant chauvinists. They are the 
mystic defenders of war and the greatest advo- 
cates of militarism. They were almost a unit 
against Dreyfus, and were largely responsible 
for the crusade of injustice against this unfor- 
tunate man. 

The part which they played in that lamen- 
table agitation revived the hatred for monastics, 
which had been more or less slumbering in the 
hearts of Anti-Clericals; and it gave to the 
people a new sense of national danger. In fact, 
monasticism and republicanism were bound to 
clash. The peaceful coexistence of two such 
powers in a democracy is a practical impossi- 
bility. In French eyes, monasticism is some- 
thing sinister, hidden behind high walls, and 
waiting for the opportunity to crush anything 
that is liberal. At best it appears as the trust 
of religion controlled by the Roman pontifiF. 
Monastic ideals and methods are the negation 

1 Narfon, ibid., p. 293. 



262 FRANCE UNDER THE REPUBLIC 

of equal opportunity. The growing ascendency 
of the orders was viewed by almost all the re- 
spectable liberal political leaders — and they 
knew what they were about — as an imminent 
danger to freedom. A Catholic acquaintance 
of Professor Barrett Wendell said that "he had 
acquiesced with regret in the suppression of the 
teaching orders, for the reason that he could 
see no other means of saving France from the 
condition of Spain." ^ Some of the most de- 
vout Catholics, even priests, shared this view. 
It was well remembered by the thoughtful, and 
proclaimed everywhere by politicians, that mo- 
nasticism was the great rock in the way of cor- 
porate freedom. From the Franco-Prussian 
war to our own time, thirty-two bills had been 
presented to the French Parliament, and de- 
feated by the occult action of the orders. They 
did not wish to see non-Catholics enjoy the 
freedom which they themselves had. 

One fact which, more than any other, aroused 
public opinion against the unauthorised orders, 
was their disregard of law. Their presence in 
the country was illegal, their property was ille- 
gal; and, no matter how good they were in 
other respects, law-breakers could not be good 
elements of national life. This practice had 

1 The France of To-day, p. 39. 



RELIGIOUS ORDERS 263 

been constant, even under the most Catholic 
governments, since the Concordat. The Jesuits 
never asked authorisation from any regime.^ 
The pious Charles X compelled them to close 
their seven colleges. The king's order so to do 
was signed, not by a Free-thinker, but by the 
eloquent Bishop de Frayssinous.^ In 1831 the 
Trappists were expelled by soldiers from their 
monastery of Melleray.^ In 1844 the Chamber 
of Deputies voted the expulsion of the Jesuits; 
but not one of them left France, even after the 
Holy See had advised the dissolution of the 
French Jesuitical communities.^ 

The orders would take advantage of the 
embarrassments of the government to penetrate 
everywhere into the country. It never was a 
"square deal." Napoleon III closed the Jesuit 
college of Montaud in 1853, he opposed the 
opening of such institutions at Brest, and at 
Le Mans in 1860, and shut the doors of the in- 
stitutions of Capuchins of Hazbrouck, of the 
Redemptorists of Douai, Arras, and Boulogne 
in 1861.^ During the same year, the Society 
of St. Vincent de Paul preferred to disappear 
rather than to allow its organisation to be under 

^ Waldeck-Rousseau, ihid.y p. 354. 

2 Rambaud, Histoire de la civilisation frangaise contemporaine, p. 354. 

3 Narfon, ibid., p. 211. * Ibid., p. 224. 
^ Rambaud, ibid., p. 553. 



264 FRANCE UNDER THE REPUBLIC 

government control.^ Under Jules Ferry de- 
crees were issued demanding the immediate dis- 
persion of the Jesuits, and the government 
approval of the unauthorised orders or their dis- 
persion. These lent a deaf ear to government 
injunctions. There were no valid reasons for 
refusing to comply with the government's behest, 
except that they considered themselves above 
the laws of the country. Driven by force from 
their convents, the monks would return quietly. 
The thirty-nine orders, which were dispersed in 
and about Paris, had reassembled by 1888.^ 
They not only disregarded all civil authority, 
but were demoralising the authorised orders. 
From 1877 to 1900 the number of illegal nuns 
rose from 14,000 to 75,000, and the authorised 
decreased from 113,750 to 54,409.^ 

Popular anti-monasticism was intensified by 
the illegal co-operation of the most unpopular — 
in fact of almost all — bishops with the orders. 
They had been one in persecuting the most 
distinguished members of the university, Gui- 
zot. Cousin, Michelet, Quinet, Challemel-Lacour, 
Jules Simon, Taine, Sarcey, Deschanel, and 
others; one in violating the Concordat which 
was a Gallican agreement; one in making 

' Narfon, ibid., 241. ^ Waldeck-Roiisseau, ibid., p. 45. 

3 Ibid., p. 104. 



RELIGIOUS ORDERS ^65 

abusive demands upon Napoleon III, and 
treating him shamefully when he did not do 
enough for the Vatican;^ one in urging France 
to wage war upon Italy for the restoration of 
the temporal power; one in having MacMahon's 
men persecute non-Catholics; one in the Drey- 
fus crisis, during which they did not conceal 
their blind prejudice; one in their hostihty to 
freedom of association. All this was only too 
well remembered, recited for the thousandth 
time by Anti-Clericals, who seemed to have 
been seized with monasticophobia. The most 
grotesque slander against a Jesuit or a Domini- 
can was never too irrational for their belief. 
Some of them who had lost all faith still ac- 
cepted the miracle of monastic perversity. The 
service^ rendered by the monks were forgot- 
ten, and all of them were swallowed up in one 
broad, sweeping condemnation. Their most 
violent critics were often their own former pu- 
pils.^ It was a member of their Church who 
said: *' Certain orders excel in making obtuse 
and inert Catholics, and active and intelli- 
gent Freemasons."^ Waldeck-Rousseau, when 
Prime Minister, was impelled by the force of 

* Narfon, ibid., p. 231. 

' Chaine, L., Les Catholiques frangais et leurs dificuliis actuelles, 1904, 
p. 195; Abbe Gayraud, La Republique et la paix religieuse, p. 234. 

• Chaine, Menus propos, p. 57. 



266 FRANCE UNDER THE REPUBLIC 

public opinion to refer the monastic question 
to Parliament. 

M. Georges Trouillot, a former Minister of 
the Colonies, and subsequently member of sev- 
eral cabinets, was made chairman of the par- 
liamentary commission which investigated the 
whole matter. His report, filled with facts of 
all kinds upon the orders, presented a trust- 
worthy and solid basis for action. The dis- 
courses of MM. Brisson, Bourgeois, and the 
Prime Minister added important data. Hith- 
erto the public had listened to much prejudiced 
gossip, vague rumours had been circulated, but 
now unquestionable evidence was at hand. It 
was shown that 5,613 monastic establishments 
paid patents on account of their industrial and 
commercial pursuits,^ 449 were devoted to 
ready-made clothing, 5 sold wine at wholesale, 

6 liquor at wholesale, 4 at retail, 2 pure alcohol, 

7 were makers of cordials, etc. In twenty years 
their property had risen from $120,000,000 to 
over $200,000,000.2 

It was further demonstrated that they had 
been remarkably skilful in handHng money, and 
in avoiding the payment of lawful taxes. M. 
Brisson read a judicial decision showing that a 
convent of Benedictines had declared to the 

^ Trouillot, oy. cit., p. 97. * Wal deck-Rousseau, op. dt., p. 40. 



RELIGIOUS ORDERS 267 

revenue receiver that some buildings were worth 
$1,000, while they were actually insured for 
$110,200.^ The same gentleman stated that one 
convent had so framed its rules that after her 
expulsion, a nun, who had brought in $400,000, 
did not receive one farthing back.^ He exposed 
the cruel treatment of girls at the institution 
of the Sisters of the Good Shepherd in Nancy, 
where poorly fed young women were subjected 
to painful labour; and this on the authority of 
a document written, not by Anti- Clericals, but 
by Bishop Turinaz of that city and endorsed by 
five archbishops and fifteen bishops.^ 

It was also shown at length that the orders 
had made a constant use of dummies, of fictitious 
societies, of sham mortgages, of pseudo-leases 
of estates to conceal the ownership of impor- 
tant property.* In a matter-of-fact way, the 
chairman of the commission focussed the rays 
of his impeachment upon the orders as enemies 
of liberty. Some of the noblest sons of the 
Church could scarcely believe their ears when he 

1 Chamber of Deputies, Jan. 22, 1901. 2 jf^d. 

2 "After five, ten, fifteen, twenty, and even thirty years of that labour 
which enriches the nuns to such a point that they were able to spend 
in a few years more than $100,000 for buUdings, a part of which were 
not really needed, these young girls, when they leave, receive neither 
money nor clothing — since I have complained, they receive insignifi- 
cant sums without relation to their work." (Statement of Bishop 
Turinaz quoted by M. Brisson, Jan. 22, 1901.) 

*Trouillot, op. cit., pp. 140, 155; Brisson, ibid. 



268 FRANCE UNDER THE REPUBLIC 

read in Parliament from the Theologia dogmatica 
et moralis, taught in sixty-seven theological sem- 
inaries, the following words: "The Church has 
received from God the power to force or repress 
those who wander from the truth, not only by 
spiritual penalties, but also by temporal ones. 
. . . These are prison, flagellation, torture, 
mutilation, death." ^ 

Not to speak of the general problem of the 
unauthorised orders, could the French people 
allow such teaching in the seminaries and in 
the pulpits of the National Church ? The Anti- 
Clericals, even the most moderate, were now of 
one mind. Their feelings were intensified when 
M. de Mun, with his usual eloquence and cour- 
age, opposed the Waldeck-Rousseau Bill, by 
virtue of ''the sovereign right of the Church 
to reign over the State." He thinks that monks 
are the best representatives of the Church. 
Some of his friends pleaded in behalf of the un- 
authorised orders, because of their humanitarian 
service. A few claimed that the law, if passed, 
would be disastrous for French finances. We 
know what to think of that now. There were 
those who praised the Little Sisters of the Poor, 
whom every one admires, and the Sisters of St. 

^ Pour Videe Idique, p. 52. The last edition of the work from which 
the words were quoted was of 1899. 



RELIGIOUS ORDERS 269 

Vincent de Paul, who are close to the heart of 
the masses, when the question at issue was the 
illegal status of the Jesuits, the Carthusians, the 
Assumptionists, and others. As a whole the 
Clericals made a poor defence of the unauthor- 
ised orders; they were prevented by their own 
precedents. The Republicans were doing what 
the Catholic governments had done all along, 
and were more liberal with the monks than 
Guizot, Villemain, the Due de Broglie, and 
Thiers had been.^ 

In this great parliamentary contention, so 
vital for Latin countries and so interesting for 
all, the point at issue was not religion. There is 
not one line in the discourses of M. Trouillot, 
or in those of the Prime Minister, which does 
not reflect the greatest respect for genuine re- 
ligion. There is, however, a continuous jet of 
generous contempt for those who seemed to 
plead for religion, when, after all, they were 
striving for something else. Waldeck-Rousseau 
applied to them the indignant words of Victor 
Hugo: *'I do not confound you, Clerical party, 
with the Church, any more than I confound the 
mistletoe with the oak; you are the parasites of 
the Church and her disease. Cease, then, to 
mix the Church with your affairs, your cam- 

* Rambaud, Jules Ferry, p. 110. 



270 FRANCE UNDER THE REPUBLIC 

paigns, your doctrines, and your ambitions. 
Do not call her your mother to make her your 
servant.'*^ 

The increase of mortmain property is dis- 
cussed, but not made central, in the debates. 
All along there stand out the numerous attempts 
of the orders to lay their hands upon the vital 
forces of the nation, and to place restraints upon 
modern freedom. It was clearly shown that 
the monastic conflict was a Kulturhampf for the 
triumph or defeat of modern civilisation, that 
all the most independent Catholic French kings 
had waged similar battles,^ and that all Catholic 
States — Italy, Bavaria, and even Spain — had 
been forced to vote restrictive measures for mo- 
nastic bodies. Some of their ablest defenders — 
M. Ribot, for instance — were quite opposed to 
monastic freedom. The bill became law. 

This law was one of the most remarkable 
landmarks of progressive French legislation. It 
granted a new liberty to all French citizens, and 
enabled them to band themselves together, or to 
form organisations for almost all possible pur- 
poses. The great movement of socialisation, 
which had given rise to a multitude of associa- 
tions, had anticipated legislation. The legion 
of societies, representing an amazing progress 

^ Associations et congregations, p. 327. 

2 Waldeck-Rousseau, ibid., pp. 89 and 218. 



RELIGIOUS ORDERS 271 

in every direction, had been formed under a 
regime of toleration. Now the scientists, the 
artists, the merchants, the Free-thinkers, and 
the Protestants had a legal warrant for their 
corporate existence. Great organisations could 
now be formed which might, at times, counter- 
balance the great Catholic machinery. This is 
what the orders dreaded and the law sanctioned. 
It recognised absolute freedom to religious and 
secular associations, except, first, in the case of 
mixed organisations of French citizens and for- 
eigners; second, in cases where the headquarters 
were in foreign countries, and, third, in the case 
of organisations whose members live in com- 
mon. Even with this last class, the authorised 
orders were not to be disturbed in their chartered 
rights, though henceforth they will be kept 
close to them. They must confine themselves 
to the work for which they were approved. 
With them, as with the authorised monks, their 
religion remains untouched: they may continue 
to be priests, they may preach if they wish, they 
may teach if they have adequate diplomas, they 
may do religiously whatever they like, except 
to be members of an unauthorised order. The 
government did not expel, but it dispersed these 
societies illegally constituted. Again it was not 
a question of religion, but of political prepon- 



27£ FRANCE UNDER THE REPUBLIC 

derance and supremacy. The issue, indeed, was 
not religion, but ''Who shall rule ? *' Ultramon- 
tane Catholicism or Republican France ? Rome 
or Paris? The point upon which all liberals 
must be agreed is that by this law France made 
one of the greatest conquests in the history of 
her legislation. 

When one views an order as a regular society, 
the Association Law seems illiberal and unfair. 
A closer attention to the nature of an ordinary 
organisation and to that of a monastic institu- 
tion reveals how dissimilar they are, and conse- 
quently how differently they should be treated. 
One is for the benefit of each individual com- 
posing it, the other practically destroys the in- 
dividual. He ceases to exist as such, and there- 
by loses all affinities for fruitful associations 
profitable to all. If a member of a society 
becomes dissatisfied, he may withdraw and take 
his share of capital and profits. In an order he 
is retained by all possible means; and if he 
retires, the sums he brought in are not returned. 
In an ordinary society, capital is accumulated 
with the thought of future distribution to its 
members; in a monastic institution there is 
mortmain property which goes on accumulating 
more and more until it may, and in many cases 
it has, become a social danger. A member of a 



RELIGIOUS ORDERS 273 

society remains a member of his family; in an 
order there is a complete severance of all family 
ties. The member of an ordinary organisation 
is a free, vital part of society, contributing to 
its reproduction; the member of an order, by 
his vows, is cut off from such functions. The 
200,000 members of the orders — good men and 
good women -— were a stupendous force of elimi- 
nation of the fittest and best elements of the 
population. The member of an ordinary society 
is a free citizen ; but that of an order violates the 
most fundamental moral and political law, that 
no human being has a right to make an absolute 
surrender of himself or of his liberty to one being, 
his monastic superior or any one else. In an 
ordinary society the member accepts the laws of 
the State; a member of an order is under the 
absolute sway of his superior, often a foreigner, 
and in any case he must be an obedient subject 
of a foreigner — the Pope. Ordinary societies co- 
ordinate themselves easily with the life and the 
laws of the State, while the orders develop a 
kind of State within the State. To allow the 
development of these unauthorised orders, for 
the present at least, would have been suicidal. 
At all events they were contrary to the stipula- 
tions of the Concordat and of the Organic Arti- 
cles still in force. 



274 FRANCE UNDER THE REPUBLIC 

Waldeck-Rousseau did not belong to the 
school of academic liberty which remains in 
the realm of abstractions; he had a clear sense 
of political necessities, but he endeavoured to 
be fair. In the settlement of the illegally ac- 
quired property of the unauthorised orders, he 
did not exaggerate when he said that he had 
chosen "the best, the justest, and the most hu- 
mane method."^ He might have acted upon 
the narrow, though strictly judicial principle, 
that all property which has no legal owner be- 
longs to the State.^ In so doing he would have 
followed the example of one of the popes,^ who 
confiscated all the belongings of the Jesuits. 
He might also have followed Louis XIV, who 
seized all property acquired contrary to his 
edicts.* He chose a different course. The law 
allows the members of the dispersed orders to 
recover the property brought by them into the 
congregation to which they belonged. It per- 
mits donors and their heirs to claim gifts made 
to the monastic institutions. It decides that 
some of this property shall be used for the relief 
of the needy members,^ and requires that the 



1 Ibid., p. 270. * IMd., p. 273. 

» Trouillot, op. eit, p. 57. * Ibid., p. 19. 

^ A decree signed by M. Briand provides a home for the aged dis- 
persed monks, in their own buildings if these have not been sold, or in 
some other place. {Le SiMe, July 12, 1909.) 



RELIGIOUS ORDERS 275 

charities intended for the poor, the invalid, and 
the incurable shall be continued to them in 
legal institutions, preferably in those of the 
Church or in those of the State. ^ Not one 
penny of this property was confiscated on be- 
half of the Treasury. 

Militant Catholics in France — they repre- 
sent only a noisy minority — have always been 
the worst enemies of the Church. By their in- 
tolerance they have made the celebrity of their 
antagonists. Some men have secured renown 
by the halo of hatred which these Clericals have 
put round their heads. They did much for 
Renan and for Littre. Lately, in Paris, they 
brought into prominence a young professor of 
the name of Thalamas who was pursued by 
them for statements about Joan of Arc, which 
he never uttered. They so abused Waldeck- 
Rousseau that he withdrew from his leadership 
and was replaced by M. Combes. Brought up 
in the Church, later on a cleric, and subse- 
quently a professor of theology, the new leader 
had left the Church of his birth, and then be- 
came its violent antagonist. He had the Anti- 
Clericalism of Waldeck-Rousseau, but not his 
sense of measure and of fairness. Seeing the 
state of public opinion, he sided with the ultra- 

* Lot relative au conirat d' association, litre III, art. 18. 



276 FRANCE UNDER THE REPUBLIC 

radicals, the Socialists, and led the Parliament 
to pass a law preventing the orders from teach- 
ing — a law to be enforced gradually in the 
course of the next ten years. Certainly there 
was much to say, and much to do, when the 
question came up of not allowing the illegal 
orders, in revolt against the laws of the land, 
to educate the children; but that was not the 
case with the authorised orders, which, equally 
with the unauthorised, M. Combes's legislation 
prohibited from teaching. Furthermore, he pro- 
ceeded to enforce the Law of Association in a 
spirit different from that in which it was voted. 
The matter of property had been largely at- 
tended to by the monks and the nuns them- 
selves. What was left could not be bought by 
Catholics except under the penalty of excom- 
munication; hence, in Catholic districts, the 
inability of the government to get hold of the 
property, or sell it at its real value. 

The work of scattering the condemned organ- 
isations was done with tact and firmness. The 
officials were always considerate — the writer 
saw them more than once at work^ — but the 
law had to be enforced. In some of the most 
ignorant parts of the country, the Clericals so 
stirred up the masses, and misrepresented the 
law, that peasants assumed a very hostile atti- 



RELIGIOUS ORDERS 277 

tude. Some of the leaders would not have 
shrunk from shedding blood. In some cases 
public oflScers, going to convents, were cruelly 
beaten or drenched with unnamable liquids. 
They were so grossly abused that national sym- 
pathies, regardless even of the merits of the 
case, were with the representatives of the law. 
After closing 500 monastic institutions and 
12,000 schools, and scattering 40,000 monks, 
friars, and nuns, M. Combes secured a great 
electoral victory and approval. The national 
endorsement must not only be counted, but 
weighed. Had it been signed, we should have 
read not only, as a matter of course, the names 
of the professional agitators of Anti-Clericalism, 
who are like all professional agitators, but also 
the names of men friendly to modern science, 
to modern culture, to sound ideas of justice; 
and a multitude of these names would have 
been those of earnest Catholics, and some of 
them, even, those of noble liberal Catholic 
priests. 

The Law of Association, as a legal recogni- 
tion of the rights of free citizens to combine, is 
so far a work above praise, but it is not a solu- 
tion of the monastic question. It is, ,at best, 
the elimination of the most turbulent orders. 
There are probably yet in France 150,000 monas- 



S78 FRANCE UNDER THE REPUBLIC 

tics who continue most of their former work. 
In a large measure the future is in their hands. 
If they wish to continue the struggle, they will 
have great national corporations against them. 
Freemasons, the Federation of Labour, and 
other strong bodies will fight them. The time 
is no longer when the Church was the only 
great organisation by the side of the State. The 
orders must realise that, whatever be the violent 
elements antagonistic to them, the most intelli- 
gent and liberty-loving citizens dread them, and 
often hate them. The good monks, disliked 
even by many of their former pupils, must cease 
to pose as if they were hated because of their 
goodness. They must no longer represent their 
opponents as the embodiment of evil, for fair- 
minded men know that not to be true. Let 
the monastics lay aside calumny as a tool, put 
a little sweetness into their relations with their 
opponents, and accept principles of political 
equity without any mental reservation. Anti- 
Clericalism has had an easy victory, because it 
had a good case. France could not stand the 
Hispano-monastic regime, still flourishing be- 
yond the Pyrenees. The orders must modern- 
ise their ideals and do their work by the side 
of the sons of free thought, the sons of Israel, 
or of Protestant communions on the basis of 



RELIGIOUS ORDERS 279 

common rights, of a common sincerity, of a 
common earnestness and solidarity. Then, and 
only then, will the monastic problem have re- 
ceived a practical and lasting solution. 



CHAPTER Xm 

THE SEPARATION OF CHURCH AND 
STATE 

THE Anti-Clericals represent all those who 
have broken all bonds of external sym- 
pathy with the militant clergy. The 
majority of them are quiet, modest theists, 
largely driven out of the Church by the political 
interferences of the priests. Some have still the 
traits of the old Voltairians. Others resemble 
the materialists of the eighteenth century, 
though they give themselves out as Positivists. 
There are those of an extreme temperament who 
pose as the custodians of reason, the defenders 
of science, and the representatives of progress; 
but this means, in most cases, that they are 
religiously indifferent, irreligious, or agnostic. 
Some Freemasons among them are as intol- 
erant as the orders themselves. Scientists are 
mostly Anti-Clerical, though moderate as a rule. 
The teachers, a noble body of men and women, 
are the greatest force of resistance against the 
efforts of sacerdotalism. The unscrupulous at- 
tacks of the clergy against the machinery of 

3§0 



THE SEPARATION 281 

State education have made them bitterly hostile 
and not infrequently irreligious. They describe 
the priests as *' formidable and tenebrous," as 
"deceiving the masses," and in kindred terms. 
Were the manufacturers, the business men, and 
the farmers divided into two classes, the larger 
one would be found with the opponents of the 
clergy. The Socialists are a unit in their Anti- 
Clericalism. 

In the Chamber of Deputies, Buisson, de 
Pressense, Jaures, Bourgeois, Brisson, Doumer, 
Delcasse, Trouillot, Millerand, and Briand con- 
stitute an Anti-Clerical group which, in ability, 
statesmanship, and character cannot be equalled 
by the twenty-five barons, dukes, and counts of 
the other side, even including worthy men like 
Count de Mun and Baron Denys Cochin. The 
same is true in the Senate. Anti-Clericals have 
with them the best educated and the most ad- 
vanced sections of the country. Abbe Gayraud 
admits that "Anti-Clerical ideas have invaded 
the electoral body and that they control it. 
How small indeed is the number of the citizens 
who, in their public life, in the exercise of popu- 
lar sovereignty, act like true Cathohcs, that is, 
care for the interests of religion and the needs 
of the Church ! The reason for this is that 
the mass of electors have of Catholicism only 



282 FRANCE UNDER THE REPUBLIC 

baptism, the first communion, the formalities 
of marriage, and a few practices imposed by 
customs and by social conventions."^ 

Such being the case, it seemed unfair for 
Catholics to ask the nation to support their 
Church. Anti-Clericals were not slow in show- 
ing this incongruity and at the same time 
accused the State Church of being a source of 
constant perturbation — that with the best in- 
tentions in the world the government could not 
satisfy her. Thus, at the beginning of 1873, the 
Catholics were greatly incensed because the 
officers of a man-of-war stationed at Civita 
Vecchia made a call upon the King of Italy in 
Rome;^ a month later, because M. Fournier, 
ambassador to the Quirinal, had spoken kindly 
of the King, and received openly well-known 
non-Catholic Frenchmen.^ To please the friends 
of the Vatican the government kept a man-of- 
war at the disposal of the Pope^ — a fact which 
greatly irritated Italian patriots. This intensi- 
fied the restlessness, the impatience, and antag- 
onism of Anti-Clericals. 

It must be borne in mind that, when the 
Separation came, in 1905, a great change had 
taken place in French politics as compared with 

'^ La Republique et la paix religieuse, p. 43. 

2 Revue des Deux Mondes, Jan. 1, 1873, p. 219. 

« lUd., Feb. 1, 1873, * lUd., Jan. IS. p. 463. 



THE SEPARATION 283 

the early days of the RepubHc. The Anti- 
Clericals were then where the Clericals had been. 
These, as soon as they could, under Mac-Mahon, 
placed bishops in the superior council of educa- 
tion; they put priests, ex-oflcio, on the boards 
of charities; they expropriated Parisian citizens 
to build that most unpopular church — the Sa- 
cred Heart of Montmartre; secured a very 
expensive system of chaplains for the army; ac- 
corded to Catholic higher institutions of learn- 
ing the privilege of granting degrees; authorised 
thirty-six religious orders; raised the Catholic 
budget of worship, which was $400,000 in 1801, 
to $10,000,000.^ 

At this time every public official from the 
President of the Republic to the least village 
constable was under their tutelage. They did 
their utmost to restore the old monarchical re- 
gime, to regain every privilege lost by, and 
since, the French Revolution. Every public 
official had to be as zealous in the cause advo- 
cated by the Church as possible. The bishops 
used all their influence with the Minister of 
Education against liberal professors, did their 
utmost to have them dismissed from their 
chairs, or attacked them, calling them '^public 
poisoners." In the common schools the Catho- 

* Narfon, op. cit., p. 270. 



^84 FRANCE UNDER THE REPUBLIC 

lie catechism was the prominent book, and woe 
to the teacher who did not display religious 
zeal ! Most severe measures were voted against 
any association which ** would tend tow^ard the 
abolition of religion," whereby was meant any 
opposition to Catholicism. 

Protestants, Jews, and Free-thinkers in the 
army, on some occasions, were compelled to 
attend the Catholic Church and to kneel before 
the altar at the command of their officers. 
Protestants, entitled by law to an honourable 
burial, were relegated to the corner of the ceme- 
tery reserved for those who had committed 
suicide. Protestant chapels were closed under 
the pretext that speakers had attacked the 
Catholic Church. The writer knew a Protes- 
tant missionary who was taken to the court of 
Draguignan, then to that of Aix, and finally to 
that of Ntmes, by a Catholic attorney bent on 
his condemnation for holding Protestant ser- 
vices. The circulation of Protestant books was 
hindered in a most vexatious manner. The 
majority of the Parliament, which was Catholic, 
refused to vote a law of religious liberty for all. 
Bishop Dupanloup, who opposed it, said that 
such a law would be revolutionary. They were 
on the side of liberty only when they opposed 
the bill on compulsory education. They acted 



THE SEPARATION 285 

in perfect defiance of the national will. By 
their intolerance and grasping spirit they aroused 
the intelligence, the conscience, and the patriot- 
ism of the nation against them. At the follow- 
ing elections, February 22, 1876, popular in- 
dignation inflicted upon them a political defeat, 
from which they have not as yet recovered. 

The Republicans had hitherto taken merely a 
defensive stand ; now they assumed the offensive. 
A most active campaign was opened against the 
orders and their friends. Gambetta voiced na- 
tional feelings when he exclaimed, "Clericalism 
is the enemy," and demanded liberation. Re- 
taliation followed. Most of the privileges se- 
cured under Mac-Mahon were nullified. The 
State right to grant degrees, recently extended 
to Catholic institutions, was repealed.^ In 1880 
the high clergy and magistrates were excluded 
from the superior council of public instruction. 
Jules Ferry took steps which eventually resulted 
in the expulsion of the Jesuits. The mortmain 
property of the orders, which, by its very nature, 
paid no inheritance tax, was forced by law to 
pay sufficiently to make taxation alike for prop- 

* The degrees are not, as in America, granted by any one school, but 
by the government. They are not only the recognition of certain at- 
tainments, but also of a virtual claim by the holder to State positions. 
This privilege of granting degrees cannot be too strictly guarded against 
the encroachments of sects or parties. 



286 FRANCE UNDER THE REPUBLIC 

erty held by a monk or a layman. The friars 
and nuns, who had hitherto been allowed to 
teach without diplomas while common school 
teachers were not, were subjected to the same 
requirement. The teaching of the Roman Cath- 
olic cathechism in the common schools was re- 
placed by that of Morals. Non-Catholic pa- 
tients had been so treated by some of the nuns 
in the hospitals that nurses took their places. 
Six faculties of Catholic theology were closed. 
x\s a matter of fact, the bishops, and not the 
Anti-Clericals, gave the death-blow to these in- 
stitutions, but their extinction was considered 
another victory for Anti-Clericals. Catholic and 
Protestant theological students were drafted for 
military service, though for a shorter time than 
were other citizens. Religious processions in 
the streets were prohibited in communities 
where a large part of the public were opposed 
to them. Crucifixes over the entrance of ceme- 
teries, in the schools or in the court houses were 
ordered to be removed. 

There was hardly one of these reforms which 
the American public would not have approved, 
because they were all in favour of impartial law; 
and yet all were resisted by the Clerical party 
as sacrilegious assaults upon Church rights. In- 
stead of disarming Republicans by reasonable 



THE SEPARATION 287 

concessions, they aroused them still more. The 
harshness of the Clericals and the excitement 
of the clergy — only five priests formed an 
exception ^ — during the Dreyfus trial, and 
the violence of the monks called attention to 
the danger of monasticism.^ Waldeck-Rousseau, 
pressed by public opinion, secured the Law of 
Association from the Parliament. M. Combes, 
carried along by the same movement, incited the 
Parliament to vote the exclusion of the orders 
from teaching. The clergy of France had en- 
joyed for over one hundred years the lucrative 
monopoly of burials. They were virtual under- 
takers, and received sixty per cent of the profits, 
even when the funerals were those of Free- 
thinkers, not attended with religious rites or 
forms of any kind.^ This monopoly was taken 
from them in 1904. 

Though victorious all along the line in this 
battle of secularisation, Anti-Clericals were tired 
of this ever-renewed conflict. They were ready, 
like unflinching surgeons, to apply the knife to 
the bonds uniting Church and State. They had, 
in fact, already made some advance in that 
direction, when the Vatican offered them a sig- 
nal opportunity so to do. 

The Vatican had so signally failed to meet the 

^ Guyot, Le hilan, etc., p. 102. 

* Narfon, Vers I'Eglise litre, p. 292. » Narfon, ibid., p. 119. 



288 FRANCE UNDER THE REPUBLIC 

obligations of the Concordat that any attempt 
to justify its course before intelHgent public 
opinion would have been frail and vain. The 
Galilean provisions of that agreement, which 
limited to a large extent the authority of the 
Pope over the French Church, had been dis- 
regarded, and the Ultramontane regime, which 
makes the Pope supreme, had been gradually 
established. Catholics may discuss among 
themselves the relative merits of the two eccle- 
siastical systems, but the fact is indisputable 
that Gallicanism was contemplated in the Con- 
cordat. There had also been a peculiar un- 
scrupulousness in bringing about the transfor- 
mation. In the case of a vacant bishopric the 
French government had the right to nominate 
an incumbent, who then received a bull of in- 
vestiture from the Holy See. Without declar- 
ing the fact, the officials of the Vatican inserted 
in the bull of investiture the Latin word nobis^ 
which changed the whole character of the 
Franco-Papal relations. By writing the bull as 
it had been for nearly a century, it was the 
President of the Republic that made the ap- 
pointment; with the insertion of nobis it was 
the Pope.^ When this clever ruse was discov- 
ered, the Quay d'Orsay declined to accept the 

^ Narfon, ibid., p. 300; Debidoiir, Histoire des rapports de VEglise et de 
I'Etat en France de 1789 d 1890, vol. I, p. 83; vol. II, pp. 362, 389. 



THE SEPARATION 289 

papal letters. After long and painful discus- 
sions the Pope was forced to surrender his in- 
glorious nobis. 

This incident was no sooner settled than an- 
other came up. Among the recent events most 
popular in France was the reconciliation with 
Italy. The loud demonstrations of loyalty to- 
ward the Vatican on the part of Clericals were 
generally followed by louder expressions of sym- 
pathy with the Quirinal on the part of French 
Liberals. They rejoiced when the King of Italy 
visited Paris, and when, later, M. Loubet went 
to Rome. This was the time chosen by Pius X 
to send a letter of protest. The attitude of 
French Catholics had forced Italy into the 
Triple Alliance, to the detriment, many Italians 
believed, of their own country. Rome, the 
cause of most political storms of France at 
home, was also a force of disturbance abroad. 

Close upon this a new incident was to have 
more serious consequences. The hostility of the 
bishops against the government was not without 
exceptions. Several of the eighty-four prelates 
of the country, who had refused to join the others 
in their loud protests against the secularising 
tendencies of the government, created a great 
commotion. Their moderation seemed to cast 
reflection upon the course of their peers. This 



290 FRANCE UNDER THE REPUBLIC 

rendered the former popular with the RepubK- 
cans, while it had the contrary effect upon the 
Clericals. The whole body of Ultramontanes 
was against them. In two dioceses a regular 
boycott was organised against the bishops. 
Their antagonists did not shrink from making, 
right or wrong, the most serious charges against 
them in Rome. They were summoned thither 
to justify themselves; but when they failed to 
go, threatening letters were sent and a virtual 
deposition of the bishops took place. ^ 

This step, no doubt permissible from the point 
of view of ecclesiastical discipline, was contrary 
to the terms of the Concordat; for if the Pope 
cannot nominate a bishop, he cannot depose 
one without prior understanding with the gov- 
ernment. M. Delcasse and his colleagues felt 
that the action of the Vatican had been deter- 
mined much more by the moderation and the 
liberalism of the bishops than by their moral or 
ecclesiastical deviations. When he failed to ob- 
tain immediate satisfaction from Cardinal Merry 
del Val, the strained relations were broken. The 
French embassy to the Vatican was closed, and 
the nuncio in Paris was informed that his diplo- 
matic functions had ceased. This was the end 
of the Napoleonic Concordat. 

^ Narfon, ibid., p. 312. 



THE SEPARATION 291 

The principle of separation of Church and 
State had been already defended by isolated 
Cathohcs. In 1872 the majority of French 
Protestant consistories were in favour of it, and 
their National Synod gave it much attention.^ 
It had also been much discussed in Parliament. 
From 1877 onward the annual vote of ecclesias- 
tical appropriations was the occasion of yearly 
discussions. In 1881 a proposition was made 
to the Chamber of Deputies to abrogate the 
Concordat." In 1896 the proposal received 152 
votes. In 1902 several proposals were made, 
sustained by 191 votes; and in 1904 the Sep- 
aratists mustered 232 votes. ^ Independently of 
the events in Rome, public opinion was moving 
rapidly; MM. de Pressense, Hubbard, Florens, 
Reveillaud, and Grosjean with Berthoulat had 
presented projects of separation before the 
Chamber of Deputies in 1903. Deputy Senac 
proposed a similar law in 1904, which was fol- 
lowed by the final bill of separation in 1905. 

The disruption was ''inevitable," says M. 
Chaine.* It was no new issue, though the acts 
of the Vatican has hastened its realisation. The 
Clericals resorted to all kinds of manoeuvres to 
secure its postponement, but even the overthrow 

^ Bersier, Histoire du synode general, vol. II, pp. 3, 338, 339, and 341. 

2 Reveillaud, La Separation des Sglises et de VStat, p. 134. 

^ Narfon, ibid., p. xxvii. * Chaine, Menus propos, etc., p. 100. 



292 FRANCE UNDER THE REPUBLIC 

of M. Combes did not help them. Those who 
had considered the separation impossible^ now 
changed their minds. The debates reached a 
high degree of elevation. The bill was dis- 
cussed brilliantly and eloquently during forty- 
eight daily or nightly sessions. Both sides had 
a profound sense of the vastness of the issues 
of the law. Both displayed uncommon powers 
in the defence of their respective positions. 
Though feelings were intense, the discussions 
remained within the domain of parliamentary 
courtesy. On July 4, 1905, the bill was passed 
by 341 votes against 233, and when on Decem^ 
ber 6, it was also voted by the Senate with a 
large majority it became law. We must ex- 
amine its tenor. 

The first article marks a new era in the his- 
tory of religious freedom. This law begins with 
the following words: "The Republic guarantees 
freedom of conscience." Then it asserts that 
the French government neither knows, salaries, 
nor subsidises any religious body, exception 
being made in the case of chaplains in the col- 
leges, hospitals, asylums, and prisons. The 
movable and immovable property of the State 
churches, the edifices excepted, are transferred 
to the religious associations who will have the 

*Gayraud, op. cit., p. 71; Reveillaud, op. cit., pp. 186, 304. 



THE SEPARATION ^93 

care of the cliurches. Reasonable provisions are 
made for the present debts of some of the 
churches. All endowments for general charities 
go to the regular State charity organisations. 
In cases in which there are no religious associa- 
tions, the property is devoted to the charities 
of the district. In all the transfers of property 
the State will not levy the usual tax. Clergy- 
men over sixty years of age, and with over 
thirty years of ministry, receive three-quarters 
of their salary; those forty-five years old, with 
twenty years of service, are entitled to one-half. 
The clergymen in office, not belonging to either 
of the preceding classes, will receive full salary 
the first year, two-thirds of it during the sec- 
ond, one-half the third, and one-third the fourth 
year. In villages of less than 1,000 inhabitants 
all these periods are doubled. Professors in the 
Protestant schools of theology have considerate 
treatment. The cathedrals, churches, chapels^ 
Protestant houses of worship, and synagogues 
remain the property of the State, but they con- 
tinue to be used without compensation by the 
Catholic, Protestant, and Jewish associations. 
The archbishops and bishops may continue to 
use the State palaces for two years. The clergy 
may continue to dwell in their manses; the 
theological seminaries and the Protestant fac- 



294 FRANCE UNDER THE REPUBLIC 

ulties of theology may remain in their present 
buildings for five years. Provisions have been 
made for the preservation of objects and build- 
ings which present a peculiar historical or ar- 
tistic interest. The archives and libraries hav- 
ing documents and charters belonging to the 
State will surrender them to the institutions to 
which they properly belong. In the case of the 
sale of any object connected with religious build- 
ings the churches will have a right to pre-emp- 
tion. The religious associations must manage 
their affairs in a businesslike way. They must 
publish annual financial reports. The local 
religious associations may group themselves into 
unions. The church buildings remaining State 
property are free from taxes, the others are sub- 
ject to the general law. Any church of any 
denomination may be opened by a simple dec- 
laration to the authorities. 

It was to be expected that provisions would 
be made against possible abuses on the part of 
the Church. Political meetings in the churches 
are forbidden. Public processions and the 
ringing of the bells are left to the mayors. As 
municipal councils are elected by the people, 
and the mayors by the municipal council, the 
citizens will decide. Religious emblems are not 
allowed upon public monuments or public 



THE SEPARATION 295 

squares, but may be placed upon religious build- 
ingSj in cemeteries, in museums, and expositions. 
Religious instruction cannot be given to children 
of the common schools during school hours. 
Threats to cause a child to be discharged, or 
any other threat on account of religion, will be 
severely punished. A heavy penalty will be in- 
jflicted upon those who may disturb or inter- 
rupt any religious service. Outrage or defama- 
tion of a public official from the pulpit will be 
severely repressed. Encouragement to resist the 
law of the country or to excite citizens against 
each other, followed by effects, makes a preacher 
liable to two years' imprisonment. Theological 
students are required to do only one year of 
military service instead of two, like other citi- 
zens, and in case of war are to serve in the 
infirmary corps. The Concordat is abrogated.^ 
Protesting against the law, Pope Pius X, 
speaking as one "holding the place of Christ/* 
says: "We condemn and reprove it as insulting 
to God, as contrary to the divine constitution of 
the Church, as favouring schisms, as hostile to 
our authority and to that of rightful pastors, as 



*It should be remembered that the expression, "the Concordat," 
is misleading. Other concordats had preceded it; that of 1472 between 
Sixtus IV and Louis XI, and that of 1516 between Leo X and Francis I. 
These concordats were not, any more than the Napoleonic one, abro- 
gated by common consent. 



£96 FRANCE UNDER THE REPUBLIC 

confiscating the property of the Church, as op- 
posed to common justice, as hostile to the 
ApostoHc See and to ourselves," etc.^ Arch- 
bishop Sonnois of Cambray was even more 
violent. In a pastoral letter issued to his dio- 
cese, he placed large headings over paragraphs, 
pretending to give the purport of the law: "No 
More God," "No More Budget of Worship," 
"No More Churches," "No More Crosses," 
"No More Calvaries," "No More Images of the 
Holy Virgin Mary," "No More Religion," and 
concluded by appealing to the faithful in the 
same large type: "Catholics, is this what you 
wish?"^ Such utterances, intended to arouse 
the people, produced the contrary effect. 

What are the facts ? A distinguished Catho- 
lic, and an untiring opponent of the Radicals, 
M. J. de Narfon, stated that the law was more 
liberal than Catholics could have expected.^ A 
group of eminent Catholics, ironically called 
"Green Cardinals," because almost all belonged 
to one or another of the five great academies, 
whose official color is green, sent a petition to 
the Pope begging him to accept the law. They 
spoke of its benefits as follows: "The most 
considerable of these advantages is assuredly 

* Vehementer nos, etc. ' L'Univers, Jan. 7, 1906. 

' V^TS VEglise libre, p. xix, 



THE SEPx\RATION 297 

the liberty of ecclesiastical nominations. But 
there are others: the free and indefinite surren- 
der of the places of worship, the temporary 
enjoyment — which may be extended — of the 
episcopal palaces, of the rectories, and of the 
seminaries, the privileges left to cultural asso- 
ciations to administer, under mere nominal con- 
trol, $40,000,000 worth of property^ which con- 
stitutes the present patrimony of the churches 
of France, and, finally, the pensions and grants 
which, though limited, assure for the immediate 
present the daily bread of our priests. Never 
will any one succeed in making the people be- 
lieve that a law which stipulates such advan- 
tages on behalf of the Church is a law absolutely 
hostile to religion."^ 

The honest purpose of the law was to put an 
end to an intolerable situation. This law can- 
not have been so deficient after all, inasmuch as 
fifty-six French prelates voted in favour of sub- 
mitting to it and only eighteen were against 



» In the text, 200,000,000 francs. 

2 Supplique d*un groupe de catholiques fran^ais au Pape Pie X» p. 13. 
These Catholics were: Prince d'Aremberg, J. C. xA.ncoc, F. Brunetiere, 
Comte de Caraman, L. de Castelnau, Denys Cochin, Leon Devin, A. 
Gigot, Georges Goyau, Comte d'Haussonville, H. de Lacombe, de Lap- 
parent, A. Leroy-Beaulieu, G. Picot, H. Lorin, Ed. Rousse, Sabatier, 
R. Saleilles, Marquis de Segur, E. Senart, P. Thureau-Dangin, A. Van- 
dal, Marquis de Vogiie. Montagnini, Les Fiches pontificales, p. 181. 
It would be difficult to find a nobler or more distinguished group of 
Catholics in any city of the world, 



298 FRANCE UNDER THE REPUBLIC 

such a course.^ They even went so far as to 
formulate rules for the new order of things. 

Protestants and Hebrews accepted it with the 
sense that it was, as a whole, the best possible 
in the circumstances. The Catholics complained 
of the strict legislation against them, but it had 
been made necessary by their past as well as 
by their more recent history. Was there any- 
thing unreasonable in preventing the clergy 
from making the churches political centres ? In 
view of the violent attacks of the clergy against 
the men of the government, was it unwise to 
forbid pulpit abuse of pubKc officials.^ In 
America clergymen may do as they like, because 
they are in their own buildings erected with 
their own funds; but in France churches — most 
of them at least — belong to the State. Was 
it unfair to prohibit threats against any one on 
account of his or her religion.^ Was it "tyrant 
nical" to forbid priests from inciting citizens 
against each other .^ In view of the fact that 
the management of the finances of the churches 
had been scandalously shocking and abusive in 
former days, was it unjust for the law to require 
regular accounting?' Should a religious corpo- 
ration be allowed practices which we would not 
tolerate for an instant in an insurance society .^^ 

* Chaine, Menus propos, p. 96. 



THE SEPARATION 299 

If those concerning whom these laws were made 
do what they ought, the laws will not affect 
them; but if they wish to resist the national 
will, they will show the wisdom of this legis- 
lation. 

The strongest objection of the Vatican was 
made to that feature of the Law of Separation 
which organised church boards, associations cul- 
tuelles. In its provisions the government gave 
the fullest possible autonomy to Catholic bodies. 
They themselves were free to elect their trustees 
as they liked. They could make them of men, 
of women, even of clergymen, or of all com- 
bined. These trustees could not be good Cath- 
olics unless they were in proper relations to 
their bishops.^ As this election was absolutely 
in their hands, they could but be satisfactory. 
The doctrinal tests were entirely in their keep- 
ing. There the government could not interfere. 
Once elected., the trustees would have committed 
to them the buildings and the endowments, but 
nothing more. At this point the government 
claimed the right to see that the funds left were 
spent according to the purpose of the giver, and 
that the legacies for the training of men for 
the priesthood or for missions were used as 
originally intended. In that respect it required 

1 Narfon, ibid., p. 330. 



300 FRANCE UNDER THE REPUBLIC 

from them, without any humihation or oppres- 
sion, what it requires from neutral societies, 
that is, nothing but a "square deal." The Pope 
objected that this was contrary "to the divine 
government of the Church." To this his op- 
ponents answered that the Parliament was not 
a theological organisation, that it was bound to 
ignore everything about the "divine govern- 
ment," and that parliamentary action was lim- 
ited to human relationship; that the proposed 
boards of trustees were far more liberal than 
similar Catholic organisations in Prussia, con- 
demned by the bishops of the country, but ac- 
cepted over their head by the Pope; that the 
Church which had acquiesced in the Concordat 
could accept anything, and that, finally, the 
great grievance of Pius X was that he could not 
control the ecclesiastical wealth of France, and 
thereby have a material hold over all the French 
clergy, and that for all time. 

The accusation that the Republic has vio- 
lated pledges made at the time of the Concor- 
dat, by which the State agreed to pay the salary 
of the clergy as a compensation for the loss of 
property at the time of the Revolution, is abso- 
lutely untenable. There is no reference to such 
an agreement in the Concordat or in the Organic 
Articles. Furthermore, there has never been 



THE SEPARATION 301 

any record of such obligations in dealing with 
the national debt. Again, if there had been 
such a recognition, the amount of indemnity 
would have been fixed in a tangible manner. 
Such an indebtedness would have been deter- 
mined accurately, and its instalments paid 
regularly upon a definite basis; but we find 
the government paying $400,000 in 1801, and 
$10,800,000 under Mac-Mahon.^ Here is an in- 
crease of twenty-six fold. Such a huge incre- 
ment cannot be understood if the $10,800,000 
paid the same debt in 1876 as the $400,000 
paid at the time of the Concordat, while the in- 
crease is perfectly intelligible on the basis that 
clergymen were paid for public service. In 
Napoleon's eyes, they were State oflScials. 

The charges of confiscation of property, as a 
whole, are untrue. There never was a *' prop- 
erty of the Church" under the ancien regime, 
but properties of parishes, properties of con- 
vents, and properties of other institutions. 
Without discussing this point, it suffices to say 
that under a Catholic king, Louis XVI, the 
National Assembly, in which there were three 
hundred and eleven priests,^ made over to the 
State, in 1789, all ecclesiastical wealth, much 
of which had been the object of scandalous uses 

^ Ibid., p. 270. * Moniteur universe!, 1789, p. 236. 



30£ FRANCE UNDER THE REPUBLIC 

by the higher members of the clergy. The 
churches were so completely considered State 
property that the government used them not 
infrequently for secular purposes. Napoleon 
transferred several of them to Protestants, 
whose own buildings had been given to the 
Church, confiscated, or destroyed during the 
seventeenth century. It is on that account that 
the Oratoire became the great centre of Protes- 
tant worship in Paris, and that the only Eglise 
Sainte Marie, in that city, is a Protestant 
church. The churches so obviously belonged to 
the State that when a Catholic parish became 
Protestant, the church was at once transferred 
by the authorities to Protestants for their wor- 
ship.^ At the death of Victor Hugo the Pan- 
theon was secularised by virtue of the same 
principle. All the property used by Catholics 
was kept up, sometimes enlarged and beautified, 
with taxes levied upon every one. Free-thinkers, 
Jews, and Protestants as well as Catholics, and 
that for over a century. There have been cases 
in which there was something bordering upon 
confiscation, but that was only exceptional. 
Several churches erected with Catholic funds 
should have been restored to them absolutely; 
but even here, if we take the case of the Church 

^ Delapierre E., NapolSon Roussel, p. 128. 



THE SEPARATION 303 

of the Sacred Heart of Paris, though the money 
came from the faithful, the land was secured 
while the Clericals were in power by a wholesale 
expropriation at Montmartre. Comte d'Haus- 
sonville, a distinguished Catholic, has shown^ 
that upon this matter the law was liberal, that 
it was a virtual recognition of independent eccle- 
siastical property, to be administered by trustees 
elected by Catholics in their own way. The 
honest purpose of the Parliament was that 
Catholics should have the undisputed use of 
this property so long as there are French Cath- 
olics. 

Another objection of the Church authorities 
was of a judicial nature. They raised the ques- 
tion: "Who in the matter of contestations will 
decide upon conflicting claims.^" Were two 
Catholic associations to petition for the posses- 
sion of the same property, who would judge in 
last resort ? The writer will go as far as he who 
goes the furthest in his admiration for clergy- 
men at large. He is ready to concede to French 
priests great merits of all kinds — zeal, earnest- 
ness, and unselfishness. France has never had 
a better clergy, better educated, better trained, 
and morally better than now, but it is a clergy 
incapable of impartial decisions. They wish to 

. ^ A'pres la Separation, p. 22. 



304 FRANCE UNDER THE REPUBLIC 

be judges in questions in which they are one of 
the parties. Thus in Culey (Meuse) the bishop 
dismissed the Abbe Hutin, while his parishioners 
wished to keep him. As soon as the churches 
preparing for associations cultuelles began their 
work, one hundred and thirty members of the 
church were for the priest, and about fifteen — 
some even questionable members — were for 
the bishop. Now, had this been referred to an 
ecclesiastical tribunal, it would have been de- 
cided on behalf of the bishop, and yet morally 
the property belonged to that overwhelming 
majority whose fathers had built the church, 
and who had themselves kept it in repair.^ The 
Protestants raised no such objection. They had 
two associations claiming the same chapel, but 
in a few hours it was satisfactorily settled by 
arbitration. The French government made pro- 
visions to submit such cases to the Conseil (TEtaty 
which would decide in equity somewhat as the 
British Royal Commission has done with the 
wealth of the Free Church of Scotland. Again, 
the statement widely circulated that the courts 
of France were filled with the ''creatures" of 
the government, as judges, counts for very lit- 
tle among those who have seen how frequently 
the French Bench has rendered — and still 

^ Lhermite and Maria V6rone, La Separation ei ses consequences, p. 85. 



THE SEPARATION 305 

renders — verdicts against the men in power. 
Recent decisions in reference to ecclesiastical 
rights to the use of buildings for worship have 
almost all been favourable to the Church. 

The Separation and its legal provisions have 
been rejected by the Vatican. It claims that 
such a step should have been taken after the 
mutual consent of the signing parties, but such 
a course has never been pursued, and certainly 
all the concordats in France were abandoned 
without any such agreement. An understand- 
ing with Rome would have meant a national 
recognition that the Pope has a right to inter- 
fere in French secular matters, and this the 
people wished to avoid at any cost. The solu- 
tion which has prevailed, contrary to the wishes 
of most intelligent Catholics, leaves clergymen 
as free as possible, but without any regular 
judicial title to the buildings in which they 
worship. Much wealth and many privileges 
were the price paid by French Catholics for re- 
jecting a settlement which was honourable and 
fair. Rome had expected a terrible crisis and 
an uprising of the nation. The people fully 
realised on which side predominated the love of 
liberty and of fair play. The outcome of the 
crisis was most disappointing for the Vatican, 
as its representatives saw the perfect apathy of 



306 FRANCE UNDER THE REPUBLIC 

the masses at the sight of ecclesiastical dis- 
establishment. The next chapter views the 
question as it forced itself upon the French 
mind in general in those days. 



CHAPTER XIV 

THE CRISIS OF THE SEPARATION OF 
CHURCH AND STATE 

IN the conflict between the Church and the 
State, if the Hberty of CathoHcs had been 
threatened or destroyed, the writer would 
be the first to raise his voice in its behalf, for 
he believes in the political right of man to be 
or not to be religious, and, if he is, to be so in 
his own way. In the present crisis both sides 
claim that they are actuated by the spirit of 
loyalty to this principle. Each appeals to the 
non-partisan part of the nation in the name of 
freedom. There can be no better evidence of 
the national attitude toward liberty and fair 
play.^ Historically, it is easy to demonstrate 
that the Catholic Church has always been hos- 
tile to liberty of thought, liberty of speech, and 
Hberty of the press, not to speak of its unsym- 
pathetic attitude toward the larger political 

^ L'Abb^ Gayraud recognises that what the majority of French voters 
wish is "justice, equal for all, the equality of all before the law, religious 
toleration; that is, to use a popular expression, to leave people free, 
and that each may do as he pleases." (La Ripublique et la paix religieuse, 
p. 44.) 

307 



308 FRANCE UNDER THE REPUBLIC 

liberty as viewed by Americans. Any one 
reading the encyclical letter Quanta Curd and 
the Syllabus of Pius IX, in which liberty is 
called "delirium," and '"liberty of perdition," 
will be convinced upon this point.* 

Furthermore, wherever it can, the Church 
claims an exclusive position. This is evident 
from statements like the following, taught in 
the seminaries of France: "If in a country the 
unity of Catholic faith reigns, the State must 
not neglect anything to drive away novelties of 
doctrines and sophistries. In such a State, 
heresy is a public crime, because everything 
which is done against the divine religion touches 
all the members of society."^ Louis Veuillot, 
the ablest journalist that Catholics ever had in 
France, embodied the whole truth in this matter 
in one of those striking sentences of which he 

^ Abbe Gayraud gives a list of some of the papal documents in which 
liberty is condemned: Pius VI, a brief of March 10, 1791, and a letter to 
Cardinal Lomenie de Brienne; Gregory XVI, encyclical letter, Mirari 
ws, Aug. 17, 1832; Pius IX, encyclical letter, Quantd Curd and Syllahm, 
Dec. 8, 1864; Leo XIII, encyclical letters. Quod apostolici. Arcanum 
divinoB sapienticB, Humanum genus^ Immortale Deiy Libertas prcestantis- 
simum, SapienticB Christianas, etc. (La RSpuhlique et la paix religieuse, 
p. 17.) 

' Trouillot, op. cit., pp. 51, 52. Lacordaire was unheeded when, long 
ago, he said: "Catholics, if you wish liberty for yourselves, you must 
wish it for all men under all skies. . . . Give it where you are masters, 
so that it may be given to you where you are slaves. (Quoted by Chaine, 
Menus propos d'un catholique libSral, p. 70.) M. J. de Narfon recognises 
that the Church has refused liberty to non-Catholics. (Vers VEglise 
libre, p. 254.) A zealous Parisian priest said to the writer; "We never 
spoke of liberty when we had the ascendancy." 



THE CRISIS 309 

was a master: "When you, Republicans, are 
in power, we demand liberty — that is your 
principle; when we are, we refuse it to you — 
that is our principle/' 

The Anti-Clericals are all Repubhcans bound 
by their past to principles of liberty. When 
they have been inconsistent, it has been while 
enforcing laws made by their opponents against 
Free-thinkers and Protestants. Republicans 
have not been unerring; they have still much 
of the spirit of the Church which taught them, 
but, as a rule, they have worked to make liberty 
more real and to enlarge its scope. There are 
men among them who with Paul Bert have ever 
been ready to say, "No tolerance for the in- 
tolerant"^ — men inclined to apply to Clericals 
the ethical rule of David Harum, "Do unto 
others what they would do unto you, only do it 
first"; but these men are only a noisy minority. 
As a rule. Republicans have worked and fought 
for the extension of impartial law. 

The question, however, which dominated 
every other during the recent crisis has been: 
"Cannot France settle her national affairs as 
England has done, or as the United States does ? 
Can she not decide, in her own way, what she 
will or will not do?" The Clericals said No! 

^ Rambaud, Jules Ferry, p. 108. 



310 FRANCE UNDER THE REPUBLIC 

France is bound to the Vatican by the Concor- 
dat, which was a "bilateral contract," "a pact," 
"a compact," or something of the kind which 
could not be given up by one of the signers. 
Cardinal Gibbons made it a sort of matrimony 
between the Church and the State — a most 
unhappy reflection upon marriage, for the Con- 
cordat was the source of ceaseless wranglings, of 
ever-renewed controversies, of annoyances for 
the State, and humiliations for the Church, so 
that it was the worst kind of discordat. The 
Concordat was not a contract, or a compact, 
but a truce between two irreconcilable belliger- 
ents, the binding character of which lasted as 
long as its terms were not disregarded. Now it 
is perfectly evident that the obligations of this 
agreement were trampled under foot by the 
Church as well as by Napoleon. 

There has seldom been a more arrogant mo- 
nopoly of religious liberty by one religious body. 
Excesses of all kinds against non-Catholics, and 
shocking partiality toward priests and monks, 
aroused the nation in such a way that the most 
truly religious men of the Church came to 
realise the religious estrangement which had 
taken place. Abbe Charles Perrault laments 
not only the reaction, but also the hatred, which 
had been called forth. "Gentlemen," said he 



THE CRISIS 311 

with sadness and gentle irony, at the opening 
of a course of lectures in Paris in 1881, *'I will 
be frank with you: at the sight of that tornado 
of wrath against us, I was seized with strange 
fears. The priest is the enemy of his country; 
the priest is the enemy of science, the enemy 
of progress, of liberty, of democracy."^ In the 
eyes of Liberals the priest, indeed, appeared as 
an enemy. It was he who urged Frenchmen to 
wage war against Italy for the recovery. of the 
temporal power, a policy which could not be 
that of a friend of France.^ It was he who 
maintained that the Church was above the 
State or tried to make it so. It was he who 
ever opposed the free scientist, was the foe of 
progress, and the apostle of mediaeval ideals. 
Right or wrong, the intelligence of the country 

^ Le Christianisme et le 'pr ogres, p. 4. Twenty years later Abbe Gay- 
raud made a similar statement. {La Republique et la paix religieuse, 
p. 272.) Comte d'Haussonville says: "What French democracy, right 
or wrong, reproaches the Church with is that she has an invincible 
regret for the time when the State considered itself ... as the sergeant 
of Christ, and was ready to put the secular arm at the service of the 
Spiritual Power — that she has not resigned herself to the neutrality of 
the Civil Power in dealing with different denominations and with the 
philosophical doctrines since the French Revolution — that she leans 
for the defence (of her claims) upon the support of the law; demands 
privileges, and does not accept frankly the new situation which has 
been created for her since Catholicism has ceased to be the State religion." 
(Apres la Separation, p. 65.) Mgr. Lacroix is even more emphatic: 
"The clergy of France are considered, in their own country, as a group 
of pariahs, as a separate caste, closed to all progress, to all light from 
the outside, hostile to all the aspirations of their contemporaries." 
(Chaine, Menus propos, p. 87.) 

' Seche, Jules Simon, p. 231. 



312 FRANCE UNDER THE REPUBLIC 

was arrayed against what was viewed as a yoke 
for the national mind. So strong was this con- 
viction, and so deep were the feeHngs aroused 
by it, that the Clerical forces were defeated 
everywhere. When the victorious Republicans 
remembered what unwise use the clergy had 
recently made of their special privileges, they 
determined to wrest from them every preroga- 
tive and every advantage which they held over 
and above other bodies of citizens. 

They began by removing the bishops from the 
Superior Council of the Ministry of Public In- 
struction. The friars — not to mention the nuns 
— could teach in the public schools by virtue 
of a lettre d'obedience from their superior. The 
Parliament decided that these monastics would 
have to provide themselves with a diploma 
like secular teachers. Both the authorised and 
the unauthorised orders played a very impor- 
tant part under Mac-Mahon; now the Jesuits 
were dispersed and the unauthorised orders 
were requested to apply for authorisation. But 
they did not; they defied the law as they had 
defied public sentiment. The nuns in the hos- 
pitals have often manifested no little intolerance 
in dealing with non-Catholic patients, and, to- 
gether with Catholic chaplains, had tried to 
bring into the Church patients in extremis. 




JEAN LEON JAURES 



THE CRISIS 313 

They had not infrequently organised what their 
enemies called la chasse au cadavre — corpse 
hunting. An inquiry of the Parliament revealed 
facts of such a nature that it was voted to re- 
place the nuns by professional nurses. The 
orders, who with their mortmain property paid 
no inheritance tax, had to be brought down to 
a fairer basis, by paying annually an additional 
sum to make rates equal for the monks and the 
common citizens. In all the public schools of 
France were taught Roman Catholic prayers 
and the Roman Catholic catechism, contrary to 
the wishes, and notwithstanding the protests, of 
non-Catholic parents. The Parliament decided 
that prayers must go, and that the teaching of 
catechism must cease. 

In the schools, the court houses, and over the 
entrance of cemeteries were crucilBxes, madon- 
nas and other indices of Roman Catholic devo- 
tion, before which every one had to stand or to 
pass. Anti-Clericals objected to seeing these 
symbols of Roman Catholic power in places 
which were strictly public. By the recent 
action of the clergy these insignia, which in 
other times would have been unnoticed, became 
irritating. The Parliament voted that they 
should be removed. The clerics who, hitherto, 
had been excused from all military service, were 



314 FRANCE UNDER THE REPUBLIC 

asked to spend one year in the barracks — in- 
stead of two, the normal time then for all — to 
make them acquainted with the movements and 
life of the army, in which, during the time of 
war, they were to serve with the ambulance 
corps. The unauthorised orders, which had re- 
fused to ask authorisation from the State twenty 
years before, were compelled, by the Law of 
Association, in 1901, to disband, though the 
authorised orders remained untouched. On 
July 7, 1904, at the instigation of M. Combes, 
a law was passed preventing the orders from 
teaching, though this change was to have ten 
years for its consummation. 

Every one of these measures, not uniformly 
wise or uniformly just, was represented by the 
Clericals as a war against the Church and against 
God. This threadbare accusation, repeated for 
a quarter of a century, has come to be regarded 
even by a large number of Catholics as an 
ecclesiastical cant phrase. The way in which 
the Clericals defended their cause won them but 
few friends. Their attitude strained the rela- 
tions on both sides. France became divided into 
two camps by a water-tight compartment of 
passion and hatred. It was then that the news 
of the protest of the Pope was spread. The 
national indignation knew no bounds; the 



THE CRISIS 315 

French ambassador was recalled. Thereupon it 
was learned that the Pope had dismissed two 
French bishops. Immediately the Concordat 
relations were at an end. 

M. Combes was in some ways the man of the 
hour. His great talent had largely consisted 
in keeping together all the Anti-Clericals. To 
the Clerical Bloc, owing its former power to its 
union and discipline, he opposed the Radical 
Bloc; both have had despicable methods. Dur- 
ing the successive regimes of the nineteenth cen- 
tury, the Black Bloc always took advantage of 
the divisions of parties, or of the embarrass- 
ments of the government, to grasp some anti- 
Concordat privileges. Had this minister been 
longer in power and had not the incidents of 
Rome created a new situation, he would doubt- 
less have done much to bring the Vatican back 
to a more faithful observance of its historic 
pledges. He had not worked for the severance 
of Church relations; but when it came, he was 
far from displeased. He lacked, however, the 
spirit of objective equity capable of organising 
the regime of liberty, and of framing laws of a 
just nature acceptable to all. The draft of a 
Bill of Separation made under him was narrow, 
vexatious, and tyrannical. 

It was fortunate that at this juncture M. 



316 FRANCE UNDER THE REPUBLIC 

Briand was made chairman of the pariiamentary 
committee appointed to elaborate the bill for 
the Palais Bourbon. The Protestants had 
been quite distressed over the bill. He asked 
them what would make it satisfactory. When 
they pointed out its deficiencies, he recognised 
their justice, and convinced his colleagues 
that Protestant grievances were real; the bill 
was amended accordingly. The Israelites were 
asked the same question. When it was seen 
that they impugned only the harsh features of 
the Combes Bill, there was no reason for not 
giving them satisfaction. Similarly, M. Briand 
consulted with his Catholic colleagues; and 
these, all the while, had frequent conferences 
with the bishops. As they all — and rightly 
too — reproved the Combes Bill, he urged them 
to state what would make it acceptable in their 
eyes. Their wishes were so far granted that 
the Catholic members considered it satisfactory. 
The Combes Bill was a war measure, that of 
Briand was one of conciliation, of equity and 
liberty. It showed such a fair spirit that the 
committee — with its Catholic majority — voted 
to present the bill to the House. It secured the 
approval of all the deputies except the extreme 
Reds and the extreme Blacks. M. Briand could 
have made his own the words of Huxley: "Fa- 



THE CRISIS 317 

natics on both sides abuse me, so I think I 
must be right." ^ 

The briUiant debates in the popular Chamber 
only showed how well the Briand committee had 
wrought. The bill was passed by 388 votes 
against 146. In the Senate it was sustained by 
179 votes against 103. This was the legal con- 
summation of the Separation, after which the 
Parliament appealed to the country. Notwith- 
standing the campaign carried on by the Vati- 
can, by the clergy, by the Clericals, and by 
every shade of conservatives, the Separation 
Law received a national sanction never dreamed 
of by its promoters. This was not a catch vote, 
a tricky surprise of the French suffrage, but one 
in keeping with the Republican majorities which 
have been more or less constant, though largely 
increased, since the overthrow of Mac-Mahon. 

No one could have convinced the French 
people that the Law of Separation was hard or 
ungenerous. This was most eloquently asserted 
in a ''Supplication'' to the Pope by the most dis- 
tinguished Catholics of France headed by the 
late Ferdinand Brunetiere. The law which on 

^ Life and Letters, p. 389. Comte d'Haussonville praised M. Briand 
for his eloquence, his courage, his respect for liberty, and for religious 
beliefs. (Apres la Separation, p. 20.) M. Chaine, another Catholic, 
points out the conciliatory spirit of M. Briand, which met with no en- 
couragement on the part of Catholic deputies. {Menus propos, p. 149.) 



318 FRANCE UNDER THE REPUBLIC 

its very threshold guarantees "freedom of con- 
science" to all French citizens regardless of 
creed, could not be viewed as a "law of despot- 
ism" — the law which allowed Catholics to use 
the State Church buildings free of charge — the 
law which accorded to Catholics the use of 
national episcopal palaces, national manses, the 
jiational seminaries for several years without 
compensation — the law transmitting to them 
the endowments under proper guarantees — the 
law which granted pensions to the amount of 
$5,400,000 to 30,000 Catholic priests and bishops 
— the law continuing their salaries for four 
years in many places and for eight years in 
twenty thousand villages of less than one thou- 
sand inhabitants; the law whereby two priests, 
nominated to their parishes two days before its 
promulgation, were entitled to their honorarium 
during four years, because of forty-eight hours 
of service ^ — this law could never be viewed 
by thoughtful persons as "a law of persecution." 
The utterances of Catholic prelates of the 
world, including those of Cardinal Gibbons, 
seemed to Frenchmen a mark of unreasona- 
bleness typical of the Roman Catholic clergy. 
What was most unfair in their sweeping gen- 
eralisations against what they called the law of 

* Lhermite and Verone, op. ciU p. 98. 



THE CRISIS S19 

despotism is that they gave people to under- 
stand that former conditions were more hberal, 
while in reality the Concordat, the Articles or- 
ganiques that go with it, and the Penal Code of 
the First Empire which supplemented both, con- 
stituted for the Church an oppressive situation 
without precedent in French history. 

The Concordat was not an agreement of prin- 
ciples, but the acceptance by Pope Pius VII 
of a situation. This acceptance was considered 
so humiliating and disgraceful for the Church 
that it gave rise to a schism known as la petite 
eglise} Joseph de Maistre, an extreme Ultra- 
montane, characterises this act of Pius VII as 
follows: ''The crimes of Alexander Borgia are 
less revolting than this hideous apostasy of 
his weak successor." The persecutions of Na- 
poleon and those of Louis XVIII did not bring 
back all the malcontents, and la petite eglise has 
survived to this day. The Pope wrote to 
eighty-one bishops and, evincing little sense of 
humour, asked them to hand him their "spon- 
taneous resignations" and to accomplish the 
**free act" which he imposed upon them, but 
thirty-six refused.^ In 1809, when Napoleon 
seized Rome, Pius VII, seeing how he was 

1 Le Temps, March 23. 1906; Narfon, op. eit, p. 78. 
* Narfon, ibid., p. 98. 



320 FRANCE UNDER THE REPUBLIC 

treated by the Great Corsican, called him "the 
new Ahab." In the most shameful manner 
Napoleon made him his prisoner, sent him as 
such to Savona, then to Fontainebleau where, 
for five years, he remained in captivity. The 
emperor endeavoured to turn the bishops against 
him, but in vain. He had some of them ar- 
rested, and, at his downfall, five hundred priests 
were in prison.^ 

This is the man whose regulations the Catho- 
lics have lately idealised. By the Concordat, 
and the Organic Articles added by Napoleon 
and, for the fear of something worse, accepted 
by Rome, the Pope had scarcely any rights in 
France. He could not appoint bishops, create 
new dioceses, correspond with the clergy, ex- 
cept through the government. Now he may 
nominate and institute whomsoever he pleases, 
of whatever age he likes, double or halve the 
number of dioceses, correspond directly by such 
means as suit his convenience. He has carte 
blanche with all representatives of French Ca- 
tholicism. According to the Concordat,^ the 
bishops could hold no national council, no pro- 
vincial synod, no deliberative assembly of any 

^ Reveillaud, ibid., p. 78. 

2 Taine has made it evident that the Concordat was bad for religion, 
bad for the high as well as for the low clergy, and especially for the State. 
(Les Origines de la France contemporaine. Regime moderne, vol. II, 
pp. 60. 74, 77. 136.) 



THE CRISIS 321 

kind; now they may have all possible national 
councils, hold any number of provincial synods 
or any other kind of representative gathering. 
In 1801 they could not leave their dioceses or 
omit to visit every one of their parishes every 
five years. They could not start a new parish. 
They were obliged to take the oath of allegiance , 
and to be ordained after the ways of the Gal- 
lican Church. They could have but one semi- 
nary per diocese, and have none but Gallican 
professors; they could not ordain students un- 
less they were twenty-five years of age and had 
an income of three hundred francs a year, and 
had secured the approval of the candidate by 
the government. They were not even free in 
the matter of their costume; they had to wear 
violet stockings. They were allowed but one 
liturgy and one catechism for the whole of 
France. 

By the Law of Separation not one, not even a 
little one, of these restrictions survives. They 
are all swept away. By the Concordat situa- 
tion the priests were compelled to take the oath 
of allegiance, recite prayers for the government, 
reside in their respective parishes, remain in 
one diocese, have no new religious holiday, use 
a definite calendar, avoid processions in the 
streets if there were other denominations in the 



322 FRANCE UNDER THE REPUBLIC 

town, avoid abusing other denominations in 
their preaching, omit all other exercises in their 
church except worship and preaching, perform 
religious marriages only after civil marriages had 
taken place, have a board of church-wardens, 
fabriques, for the preservation of church build- 
ings and the distribution of charities. The na- 
ture of their dress was also stated. Domestic 
chapels and private oratories were not allowed 
without the permission of the government. To 
crush la petite eglise and all Catholic dissent, no 
priest could exercise any function unless he 
belonged regularly to a diocese, that is, was 
fegularly under a bishop. Furthermore, in the 
case of abuses, appeal was made, not to the 
Pope, but to the Council of State. The matter 
of marriages aside, a-11 these limitations have 
been removed, and the Pope is the final author- 
ity in all religious questions, and as unrestricted 
in the legal exercise of his functions as in the 
freest land in the world. Napoleon subjected 
the Catholic clergy not only to the Concordat 
and the Organic Articles that go with it, but 
also to the Penal Code, which punished clergy- 
men with a really Draconian severity, sending 
them to prison for criticism or censure of the 
government, of a law, of a decree, or of any 
other public act of the servants of the State. 



THE CRISIS 323 

Nothing brings out the genuine liberal charac- 
ter of the Law of Separation like a comparison 
with the tyrannical character of the regime in- 
augurated by the Concordat.^ 

In presence of such facts one cannot under- 
stand the protests of Catholics if they speak of 
the liberty they enjoyed under the Concordat. 
They did not fulfil its obligations, but clung to 
its material benefits. At times under Catholic 
kings the authorities made upon the clergy de- 
mands as vexatious as ridiculous. Thus Min- 
ister Barthe sent a circular ordering the clergy 
to baptise with warm water in winter and with 
cold water in the summer. Similarly, under 
Louis-Philippe, the government watched the 
clergy to see if they sang Domine salvum fac 
regem followed by Ludovicum Phillippum.'^ To- 
day they have not one of these annoyances. 

Furthermore, the action of Pius X went 
against the grain of French Catholic feelings. 
We have already stated that the Catholic mem- 
bers of the parliamentary committee were work- 
ing harmoniously with the bishops, and they 
thought that the Separation Law was acceptable 
and would be accepted — that the most distin- 

* Strange to say, Caprara, the plenipotentiary of the Pope, speaks 
in his letters as if he had been more perplexed by matters of trivial 
importance than by this enslaving of the Church. (A. Debidour, 
Uu'oire des rapports de VEglise et de VEtat de 1789 a 1870, p. 223.) 

2 Narfon, ibid., p. 210. 



SM FRANCE UNDER THE REPUBLIC 

guished Catholics of France had pleaded with 
the Holy See to try it. The majority of the 
bishops had been in favour of a conciliatory 
attitude; but when the Pope rejected the law 
and commanded the Catholics to disobey the 
government of their country, his action was pri- 
marily due to the influence of Mgr. Lorenzelli, 
the nuncio, later on made Archbishop of Lucca 
— pronounced spitefully by many French Cath- 
olics archeveque de Lucre — suggesting thereby 
characteristics of an unworthy representative of 
the Vatican.^ The decision of the Pope was 
most emphatically affected also by the advice 
of Mgr. Montagnini, a man signally incompe- 
tent to gauge the situation, and whose corre- 
spondence^ has called forth most sincere pity for 
the Pontiff dependent upon such information. 

The most striking fact, in connection with 
this event, is the satisfaction it seemed to pro- 
duce in the minds of Frenchmen at large. The 
efforts made to disturb their impassibility have 
proven vain. The extreme language of the 
Pope, of the bishops, of the priests, and of their 
militant laymen has often been considered ex- 
cessive by Catholics themselves, and always dis- 
ingenuous by Free-thinkers. The latter have 
not infrequently pointed out, not without a 

1 Narfon, ihid., p. 303. ' Les Fiches pontificales, 1908. 



THE CRISIS 325 

little malice, that, while they, the clergy, re- 
belled against the new legal situation, they ac- 
cepted the pensions. The priests rejected the 
law, but in cases where associations cuUuelles 
complying with the new order of things secured 
the churches, they used this same law to have 
the churches returned to them on the plea that 
associations cultuelles were not approved by the 
Pope. The courts decided in favour of the 
clergy, on the ground that the purpose of the 
legislators was that Catholics in good standing, 
should have the use of the churches. Here, 
again, Free-thinkers pointed out that, after 
rising against the law, the clergy were making 
use of it. There are those who had admired 
Pius X when he defiantly, and at a great cost, 
opposed the Republic; but when they saw the 
clergy take the pensions and use the law on ac- 
count of its benefits — rejecting its obligations 
— r the impression was painful. 

The rank and file of parish priests are quiet 
and peace-loving. Were they left to them- 
selves, they would not disturb the authorities. 
They are goaded to action by the bishops who 
of late have again taken up arms against some 
of the text-books used in the common schools. 
As ever, they have been absolutely tactless., 
They made charges against the morality of 



S26 FRANCE UNDER THE REPUBLIC 

teachers; but when these teachers threatened to 
sue them before the courts, they answered that 
the word moral as used by them did not mean 
what was reprehensible in the hves of teachers, 
but that they were out of touch with the Church. 
Again, as to the text-books they were forced to 
state which ones were bad. Those indicated 
were so few that the people, who had hitherto 
given no attention to the matter, came to 
realise what a rich collection of sound manuals 
of moral teaching the nation has. Some had 
been used for years in Catholic schools with- 
out any complaint. The prelates have also as- 
sailed the historical text-books. They even 
dared to condemn Lavisse's Histoire de France 
— a book generally conceded to be admirably 
impartial. 

In the interpellations which took place in 
Parliament in January, 1910, it was shown that 
moral and historical teaching was far from ideal 
in the Catholic schools themselves. Minister 
Doumergue quoted the following from the text- 
book of morals used in Pas-de-Calais: "How 
much must one steal so that there should be a 
mortal sin?" The answer was: "From a poor 
man, one franc; from a workingman to the 
amount of a day's wages, that is, three or four 
francs; from a rich man, no matter how rich 



THE CRISIS 327 

he is, ten or twelve francs."^ His quotations 
from their histories are not better. It would 
be a thousand pities to judge the text-books on 
both sides by their deficiencies, for as a whole 
they are remarkable, but the aggressors must 
not be astonished if Republicans resent the 
attacks of the bishops against such books or 
their threats against the teachers. The in- 
capacity of the prelates to state facts as they 
are is evident from an address of Bishop Laurans 
of Cahors, before the Court of Agen, whither 
he was summoned because of some of his ut- 
terances against the schools. "Formerly," he 
said, "no European was admitted into Japan 
without trampling the crucifix under foot. 
That hateful practice has long been suppressed 
in the Empire of the Rising Sun. But we do 
not wish that it should be established in the 
land of France, and that Catholic children 
should be compelled to deny their baptism 
before they cross the threshold of the common 
schools."^ This is a fair specimen of the gro- 
tesque exaggerations of some of the bishops. 
One of their charges against the text-books of 
morals is that they do not teach the doctrine of 
"the original sin" or "the supernatural."^ For 

^ Le petit Temps, Jan. 19, 1910. ' Le Siecle, July 31, 1909. 

' Lettre pastorale collective des ivSques de France, 1909. Also Ordon- 
nance de condamnation de Mgr. Villard, eveque d'Autun, 1909. 



328 FRANCE UNDER THE REPUBLIC 

the non-Catholic children of the common schools 
they have no regard, and they aim at nothing 
short of having Catholic doctrines taught to 
them. 

All this militant activity availed the Church 
but little. Had the efforts made in various 
directions to discredit and overthrow the Re- 
public been exerted to win, to instruct, and 
train the churchless masses to a better life, the 
clergy would soon have regained their ascen- 
dancy. There was no longer the presumption 
that they were the tools of the government as 
formerly. Their purpose was not so likely to 
be misunderstood. The present war has given 
them a signal opportunity which they are using 
to recover some of the lost ground. Forgetting, 
for the present at least, the old conflicts, they 
have given the noblest manifestations of their 
humane and fearless devotion. The Anti-Cleri- 
cals have also moderated some of their claims 
of absolute State secularism, but whatever be- 
fall, French democracy has passed a final judg- 
ment upon the great issue which we have dis- 
cussed, and will never agree again to a virtual 
papal protectorate over the country. 



CHAPTER XV 

CONTEMPORARY FRENCH PROTES- 
TANTISM 

FRENCH Protestantism is an offshoot from 
Catholicism. Its relations to the old his- 
toric Church are different from those 
which American Protestant churches sustain to 
the Church of the present Pope. That of France 
is an ever-protesting Protestantism, growing 
away from the old Church, and yet still feeling its 
influence for good or for evil at every step. The 
blunders of Rome have often proven calamities 
for French Protestants. To be just, one must 
remember that, contrary to common opinion, 
Catholicism never completely conquered the na- 
tive religions of France — that beneath many of 
the religious practices in some districts are still 
the earlier faiths, the cults of the Druids, and, 
in Brittany, to this day, druidical gods are still 
worshipped under the name of saints, though 
these saints are not in the Roman Catholic cal- 
endar. In many parts of France practices with 
no religious character still survive, which are 
remnants of primitive cults. French Protes- 

329 



330 FRANCE UNDER THE REPUBLIC 

tants all along have fought what they considered 
the superstitions of Catholicism, which were in 
reality the survival of the old ethnic religions 
which the clergy never were able to extirpate, 
xlgain, at the height of her power, the Church 
almost worshipped theological, philosophical* 
and ecclesiastical immobility. For her the most 
dreaded enemy was the innovator. In this 
French reformers were at one with the Catholic 
clergy. When they were accused of being in- 
novators, they denied the charge. They sim- 
ply wished, they asserted, to go back through 
past changes to Christ; they were the true con- 
servatives. The idea of progress^ had never 
entered as yet into the French mind. It was 
in the name of conservatism that Protestants 
began their work. Their religious conceptions 
were shaped by one of the greatest men who 
ever lived, John Calvin, who inspired and to 
some extent organised the churches of France. 
The first Protestant church was formed at 
IVfeaux in 1525, and from that time to the dawn 
of the French Revolution, with only one im- 
portant break of continuity, the history of 
French Protestants is a long martyrdom, with 
paroxysms of intensity, such as the Massacre 

* The word progress was first used in French literature by Voltaire in 
1737, 



FRENCH PROTESTANTISM 331 

of Vassy, the Massacre of St. Bartholomew's 
Day, the Dragonades, and the Revocation of 
the Edict of Nantes. In 1685 the seven hun- 
dred pastors who were left were compelled, 
within the space of two weeks, either to recant 
or to leave the realm. Their churches .were de- 
stroyed, their schools closed, and their property 
confiscated. Their books were sought for and 
burned. From 1678 to 1802, no Protestant 
version of the Bible nor any other Protestant 
literature was printed in France. 

It is estimated that at least five hundred 
thousand Huguenots fled during these persecu- 
tions. Some found their way to South Africa, 
where French names are still common among 
the Boers. Some fled to Switzerland, the French 
part of which contains, to-day, a large Huguenot 
population. Others sought refuge in Germany, 
where we find the town of Fredericksdorf with 
its archaic French tongue, its French customs, 
and its French Protestant liturgy in the church. 
Still others fled to Holland, where there are 
yet nearly a score of French churches. Many 
reached England, and we find still in Bristol and 
Norwich unused Huguenot churches, as well as 
a very prosperous one in London. In the crypt 
of the Canterbury Cathedral French services, 
inaugurated at the Revocation of the Edict of 



332 FRANCE UNDER THE REPUBLIC 

Nantes, have not been discontinued to this day. 
Not a few of these noble exiles came to America, 
made large settlements in the South, had 
churches in New York, were predominant in the 
settlement of Kingston, founded New Paltz, 
New Rochelle, settled in Massachusetts, and 
were numerous in Boston, where Faneuil Hall 
was named after one of them. Bowdoin College 
also bears the name of a Huguenot. Priscilla 
Molines was Huguenot, and others on the May- 
flower. The total emigration is conceded to 
have been half a million persons, and it is esti- 
mated that had it not been for the Revocation, 
France would have now at least 6,000,000 
Protestants instead of 700,000. Those who emi- 
grated carried everywhere a highly respected 
name, were thrifty, broad-minded, and pro- 
gressive, God-fearing men. 

Of the ministers who remained at home after 
the Revocation, about one hundred were put to 
death. All Protestants were subjected to a 
barbarous treatment which set on fire the soul 
of Voltaire against their oppressors. Children 
were torn from the arms of their parents to be 
taken to convents, where they were taught 
Catholicism. The poor Huguenots were seen 
crossing France, chained with vile criminals, on 
their way to the galleys. One of them was con- 



FRENCH PROTESTANTISM 333 

demned for life because he had taught boys to 
sing psalms. It was a crime, punishable as 
such, to give them shelter or to fail to denounce 
them to the authorities. As late as 1767 a 
Protestant minister was condemned to death 
because he was a Protestant minister. Yet 
these Huguenots, as a whole, remained remark- 
ably steadfast. They would walk the greatest 
distances to hear preachers upon whose heads 
a great price had been set, and whose voices 
seemed to echo the preaching of the early mar- 
tyrs of the Church. They gathered and wor- 
shipped by night, in the unpopulated parts of 
the country, and their meetings became known 
as those of the Church in the Desert. They 
were often surprised by the king's soldiers, fired 
upon, killed or captured; the men were sent to 
the galleys for life and the women to prison. 
Marie Durand spent thirty-six years in the 
Tour de Constance at x^igues-Mortes, and Ma- 
dame Guizot, the mother of the historian, was 
hit by a bullet at a night service in the fields 
near Nimes. 

The Huguenots, even in these circumstances, 
dared to hold a synod in an old abandoned 
quarry of the South. One may realise what the 
persecution must have been by the fact that of 
the first signers of the minutes of this synod, 



334 FRANCE UNDER THE REPUBLIC 

four died the martyr's death. Until the very 
eve of the French Revolution they were still 
forced to go to mass and were ostracised by law. 
What was most galling for them, and worked 
most deeply into their moral sensitiveness, was 
that Protestant marriage was considered null, 
and that they, the puritans of the puritans, the 
purest men and women of Europe, were looked 
upon as living in concubinage. Their greatest 
grief was that their children were considered 
illegitimate. The Church did not cease her 
relentless persecution .of Protestants until the 
eve of the French Revolution. As late as 1774, 
when Louis XVI was crowned at Rheims, he 
was virtually forced to take the following oath: 
''I swear that I will apply myself sincerely and 
with all my power to exterminate, in all the lands 
under my dominion, the heretics particularly 
condemned by the Church." However, the 
sentiment fostered by Voltaire along the line of 
toleration, the influence of the Encyclopedists 
and the efforts of La Fayette brought about 
the Edict of Toleration of 1787, which gave the 
Huguenots a relief soon to be eclipsed by the 
French Revolution. Some of the men who had 
survived the persecutions of the Ancien Regime 
perished during the mad excesses of the Terreur. 
This closes the first period of their history. 



FRENCH PROTESTANTISM 335 

Two or three considerations must be borne 
in mind at this point. In the first place. Hugue- 
not history renders to the Christian Church and 
to historical science a great service in being a 
complete refutation of the historic theory of 
races as the ultimate determinants of religion. 
The study of the rise and development of French 
Protestantism shows us how untenable is the 
assertion that Germanic nations are Protestant 
and that the Celtic are Catholic. We know 
positively now that man was present in France 
during the paleolithic and the neolithic periods. 
During thousands and thousands of years of 
prehistoric times man dwelt there, and numer- 
ous immigrations followed one another up to the 
time of the Roman Conquest. Then came the 
Germanic invasions and constant ethnological 
contributions of the whole world to the French 
people, who are therefore neither Celtic nor 
Latin, but mixed to the highest degree with a 
preponderance of Celto-Germanic elements. 

Anthropology enables us to locate the parts 
of the country which are particularly Celtic or 
Germanic. Now it happens that the districts in 
which Protestants are most numerous are not 
Germanic, and the most important part of the 
nation which contains a Germanic population is 
Catholic. The same thing is true in Switzerland 



336 FRANCE UNDER THE REPUBLIC 

where the French are Protestant and the Ger- 
mans are often Cathohcs. It is so in Belgium, 
where Protestantism is making rapid gains 
among the French and has no encouragement 
among the Flemish, who are Germanic. This 
is very important, for the Gobineau doctrine is 
not only historically erroneous, but it saps the 
very foundation of Christian tea^ching. It is a 
return to Judaism, which makes blood, rather 
than spiritual forces, the great determinant of 
religion. 

A second consideration is that the exile and 
the partial destruction of the Huguenots not 
only took away the best men of France morally, 
but also those of the greatest intellectual elas- 
ticity. This loss of the Huguenots was a most 
unnatural selection, for it was the elimination of 
the best and the noblest. The men who suc- 
ceeded in making their escape were men of 
means, and acquainted with the countries near 
them. The poorer, the less enterprising, and 
the least educated remained at home. The 
stock from which the Protestants of France 
have issued, though a remarkable stock, is a 
stock of remnants revived by their faith and 
the inspiration of their ancestry. 

It has been customary to speak of Napoleon 
I as the restorer of religion in France by the 



FRENCH PROTESTANTISM 337 

Concordat, but the religious life had resumed 
its normal course long before this time. In 
1796, 32,^14 churches were already reopened to 
Catholic worship, and 4,571 were on the eve 
of being reopened. A year later Bishop Lecoz 
of Rennes asserts that 40,000 parishes were 
provided with priests.^ In 1795 the Protestants 
reopened their churches and resumed their 
ecclesiastical life. The exceptional situation of 
all Protestant churches in France at this time 
was scarcely abnormal for them, for these sons 
of the Reformed churches had long been ac- 
customed to live under hostile edicts, to bear 
regimes of petty toleration, and to endure bar- 
barous persecutions. 

To many, however, the Bonaparte appeared 
as the restorer of Protestantism. Indeed, he 
assured them that they should enjoy "freedom 
of worship," and stated a great political truth, 
which he forgot in practical life, when he said: 
"The realm of the law ends where the indefinite 
realm of conscience begins." Neither the Church 
nor the State had ever gone that far even the- 
oretically. However, he refused them^their 
synodal organisation, so essential to their eccle- 
siastical life; he prevented them from giving a 
constitutional expression to their faith; he sup- 

^ Debidour, op. cit., p. 161. 



338 FRANCE UNDER THE REPUBLIC 

pressed their parishes and estabhshed, instead, 
consistories whose members were elected by 
those paying the most taxes; he gave a certain 
freedom to these organisations, but prevented 
them from working together;^ he took away 
the power of the churches over their pastors, 
who were settled for life and became State offi- 
cials — thus reducing the Church to a part of 
the State machinery. He gave Protestants, 
however, guaranties which were new. To these 
sons and daughters of martyrs, for whom per- 
secution had almost always been a concomitant 
of life, he virtually said: "You will, hereafter, 
enjoy all the privileges of citizenship, your mar- 
riages shall be honoured, your children freed 
from former disgrace, and your sons, when their 
merit and character shall designate them, may 
be elevated to high military and civil distinc- 
tions. You will have your own churches, your 
own organisations, protected by the govern- 
ment; your worship regulated and safeguarded 
by law; your pastors paid by the State. They 
will come, in State functions, immediately after 
Catholic bishops, but on a par with them." 
This was far more than the Protestants had 
ever expected. He did much for them. 

* Bersier, Histoire du synode ginSral de Viglise r^formh de France, 

vol. I, p. XXX. 



FRENCH PROTESTANTISM 339 

Protestants sounded the praises of their bene- 
factor. One of their preachers, in Strasburg, 
six years after the Concordat, took his text from 
Luke 1:32, "He shall be great,"^ and made 
that prophetic reference to Jesus apply to Napo- 
leon. Three years later, on the occasion of the 
opening of the School of Protestant Theology 
of Montauban, the dean chose for his text, or 
rather for his pretext, Ezra 7:27, ''Blessed be 
the Lord God of our fathers, which hath put 
such a thing as this in the king's heart, to beau- 
tify the house of the Lord which is in Jerusa- 
lem."^ The "king" here is Napoleon and the 
"house of the Lord" is the school of theology. 
The Protestants lacked, as do all the persecuted, 
the necessary poise for a true appreciation of 
the course of the "Man of Might." What else 
could have been expected from men who had 
but a very imperfect education, and had lived 
through the terrible disabilities of the Ancien 
Regime and the horrors of the French Revo- 
lution ? 

Their theology went scarcely beyond a mere 
theism with the acceptance of the miraculous 
element of the Bible, but was far away from 

^ Vincent, A., Histoire de la predication de lan^ue frangaise au dix- 
neuvieme siecle, p. 19. 

' Sardinoux, A., AlSmoire universitaire et ecclesiastique sur la FacultS de 
theologie protestante et le SSminaire de Montauban, 1888, p. 34. 



S40 FRANCE UNDER THE REPUBLIC 

even the broadest Christology of modern evan- 
gelical churches.^ Their preaching hardly ven- 
tured outside of the affirmations of natural 
rehgion. Some of them had read EngHsh deists, 
but not the works of their critics, such as Butler 
and others. Their pulpit themes were moral 
commonplaces, such as "The Beauty of Virtue," 
"The Ugliness of Vice," "Politeness," "Re- 
spect Due to Old Age," "Hasty Judgments," 
"False Confidence in Prosperity," and "The 
Advantages of Mediocrity." ^ The divinity of 
Jesus is almost never referred to. "He came," 
they say, "to reveal the moral law more clearly 
to us." His kingdom is "the kingdom of moral 
order over wills and the perfect harmony be- 
tween virtue and happiness." "His mission," 
declares another, "is to renew the ordinances of 
justice." "He has become our guide," says yet 
another, "in the path of truth." ^ This homi- 
letic superficiality was soon broken through by 
the influence of Germany, which taught Protes- 
tants how to study the Bible, to fathom theol- 
ogy, and to deepen religion. Thereupon arose a 
movement which gave a new character to this 
intellectual progress. From Switzerland and 
from Great Britain came an irresistible wave of 



* Bersier, ibid., p. xxxiv. ^ Vincent, A., op. ciL, p. 5. 

« Ibid., p. 7. 



FRENCH PROTESTANTISM 341 

religious impulse which awakened the churches 
to an unusual spiritual fervour. This period 
is known in French Protestant history as Le 
ReveiL Again, the British, and later on the 
Americans, taught French Protestants how to 
make a spiritual use of their knowledge by 
organising their religious works. 

This foreign influence was not an unmixed 
good, for from across the Rhine came ration- 
alism and from Great Britain a superficial 
Biblicism and a needless Protestant denomina- 
tionalism. France had already Lutherans as 
well as Calvinists; to these were now added 
Free-Churchmen, Methodists, Baptists, Advent- 
ists, Swedenborgians, Campbellites, and several 
others. French Quakers were not an importa- 
tion, for in France this body existed probably as 
early as in England, though the two bodies 
were unknown to each other. ^ All these de- 
nominations, with a certain amount of self- 
reliance and different organisations, exerted, as 
a whole, a good influence upon the Huguenot 
churches, goading them to a greater activity. 
French Protestants have had their ideas coloured 
also by Catholicism. In the matter of pastoral 
relations their ministers are yet endowed with 
a semi-sacerdotal function, and the communion 

^ Jaulmes, E., Les Quakers fran^ais. 



342 FRANCE UNDER THE REPUBLIC 

itself is, for some, a sacrament, imparting exter- 
nally a divine grace; at times, when given to 
the sick, it is a virtual extreme unction. This is 
not the direct result of teaching but of tradi- 
tions, and, above all, of the force of example 
continually before them. All French Protes- 
tants feel constantly the power of the Catholic 
Church either by imbibing her ideas or by way 
of anti-Catholic reaction. When this is the case, 
they become sensitive to the influence of mate- 
rialistic thought. Among the advanced liberals 
there is often no little sympathy with extreme 
materialists. In their contact with these men 
they absorb their optimism, which gradually 
displaces the pessimistic moroseness of a large 
number of Protestants. It must be admitted 
that, without giving up any particular doctrine, 
they have assimilated hedonistic notions so far 
advocated only by positivists. 

The influence of relations with the State has 
been felt all along and especially by the evan- 
gelical element. The evil of the system was 
the lack of spiritual independence and only a 
partial subordination to the spiritual head of 
the Church. With all our admiration for the 
liberals, we cannot but deplore their former fear 
of losing State support and their lack of faith in 
their own adherents. Standing boldly for an 



FRENCH PROTESTANTISM 343 

unrestricted freedom of theological thought, they 
have clung tenaciously to a most humiliating 
system of State-Church financial support. 

The numerical growth of the churches has 
not been great. Pastor Perrenaud calculates 
from reliable data in the correspondence of 
Rabaut-Dupuis that in 1802 there were 428,000 
Protestants in France.^ M. Frank Puaux, from 
another source, sets them at 525,000.^ To halve 
the sum of these two estimates would give us 
475,000 Protestants at the beginning of the 
nineteenth century. They number now about 
700,000. The numerical gain has therefore been 
relatively small, but their advance in other re- 
spects has been very important. The formula 
which represents their history during the last 
hundred years is the expansion of life. 

The first manifestation of this expansion was 
the making of a new ministry. At first the pas- 
tors received a superficial training in Geneva. 
Later on a school of theology was revived in 
Montauban. The programme of preparation 
for the ministry was fairly good, but theological 
students were far from displaying a proper 
spirit. Some there were who chose the ministry 
to avoid military service. The habits of a con- 

* Etude historique sur les progres du protestantisme en France, 1889, 
p. 201. 

' Les OBUvres du protestantisme frangais auXIX' siecle, p. xxxi. 



344 FRANCE UNDER THE REPUBLIC 

siderable number were such that the authorities 
repeatedly threatened with punishment those 
*'seen in cafe-houses, in bilhard -halls, at the 
theatre, at balls, and in gambling places."^ 
Later another school was opened in Strasburg, 
but after the Franco-Prussian War it was trans- 
ferred to Paris. The students in both schools of 
theology now are morally and spiritually equal 
to those of Protestant institutions anywhere. 

Three preparatory schools, with a healthy re- 
ligious and intellectual atmosphere, lead their 
students to the baccalaureate of letters which is 
required for entrance to the regular course in 
the theological schools. The Protestant pri- 
mary schools, once quite numerous, were merged 
into those of the State, under the Third Repub- 
lic, because the principle of freedom of con- 
science which had occasioned their creation had 
triumphed, as a whole, in common schools. 
Most pastors began their education there. 

Friendly to every form of progressive educa- 
tion, Protestants, helped by the State, wished 
to have ministers broadly trained, and through 
them to bring all the world of truth, of philoso- 
phy, and of science to the service of religion. 
What a contrast between the Protestant clergy 
of seventy years ago and that of the present! 

^ Sardinoux, op, cit., p. 37. 



FRENCH PROTESTANTISM 345 

Thus, on May 1, 1839, 428 men were in different 
capacities exercising pastoral functions, and only 
one was a university man.^ The 90 or 100 min- 
isters of 1802 have become at least 1,000, who 
constitute a ministry second to none, if we con- 
sider merely intellect and conduct. The calling 
is highly honoured. That remarkable Monod 
family, which has produced such uncommon 
men in various walks of life, has a dozen repre- 
sentatives in the ministry at the present hour. 
It is not infrequent that all the sons of a pastor 
become ministers. At the Synod of Paris, in 
1872, it was said that one of the delegates pres- 
ent had found himself, on one occasion, sur- 
rounded by 17 pastors, former members of his 
Bible classes.^ These pastors are bound to- 
gether not only by ecclesiastical ties, but also 
by many organisations, the aim of which is 
greater qualification for their ministry, mutual 
culture, and mutual help. 

As to their tenets, the most rationalistic pas- 
tors, to judge from their preaching, are more 
religious than the men of Napoleon's time, while 
the others represent a broad and, as a whole, 
an earnest orthodoxy, ranging from that of men 
like Doctors Abbot, Gordon, and Moxom to 
that of Pierson and Moody. In all bodies of 

» Ibid., p. 78. « Bersier, op. city p. 829. 



346 FRANCE UNDER THE REPUBLIC 

men we can, at best, strike averages; the aver- 
age of intelligence, of earnestness and consecra- 
tion among French Protestants is high, although 
they have their unworthy members and their 
ecclesiastical parasites. They are generally es- 
teemed by their flocks for their sincerity and 
the absence of subtleties which are so common 
among theologians. They are respected inside 
and outside of their congregations. Owing to 
the lack of development of the lay element in 
the churches, the pastors might often say, 
L'Eglise, c'est moi. Under the system ended by 
the Separation, the Church, the real Church, 
counted for but little; the pastor was preacher 
and virtual administrator of his flock. This has 
now come to an end. In many ways French 
pastors have exerted much power by themselves, 
and often, also, by their sons and their daugh- 
ters. In general the sons of ministers are im- 
portant rising social factors. When one thinks 
of the untrained half-deistical pastors of a 
century ago and the thousand active and fairly 
progressive pastors of to-day, he is sensible of a 
marvellous change. 

Another manifestation of this Protestant life 
is the making of most important instruments for 
church work. In 1802 the sons of the Hugue- 
nots had not one page of printed matter which 



FRENCH PROTESTANTISM 347 

they could use as their own, no religious litera- 
ture, and no Bibles. It took them twenty years 
to furnish themselves with copies of the Scrip- 
tures, and these were obtained only with excep- 
tional difficulty. Now they have Bible socie- 
ties, not to speak of the British and Foreign 
Bible Society, which works with them and em- 
ploys half a hundred colporteurs to spread the 
sacred volume throughout the land. Together 
these societies have distributed in France not 
far from 15,000,000 Bibles and New Testaments. 
It is difficult to exaggerate the good Work of 
their Tract Society, whose pubhcations have 
generally maintained a high level. Years ago 
Saint-Marc-Girardin read one of these tracts 
before his hearers at the Sorbonne, illustrating 
a literary point which he was discussing.^ The 
Protestant Publication Society circulates good, 
healthy books which, though not very literary, 
meet a popular want. 

Never has a small religious body made a 
greater use of the press. Three of their reviews 
are really valuable — La Revue chretienne, La 
Revue de Theologie, and Foi et Vie, For over 
half a century they have had a historical society 
which has displayed great energy in collecting 
and publishing documents of a most valuable 

^ Saint-MarC'GirardiQ, Couts de litterature dramatique, vol. I, p. 74. 



348 FRANCE UNDER THE REPUBLIC 

character upon the history of their fathers. In- 
deed, among French Protestants, reverence for 
ancestors takes the form of a cult. To honour 
them is in their mind an homage to the Great 
Power that made them great. 

Though they have been incHned to translate 
the best works of foreigners and have assimi^ 
lated much of the best foreign thought, Protes- 
tants have also produced a large number of 
books of considerable power, many of which 
Jiave had the honour of being translated beyond 
French frontiers. The great work of Edouard 
Reuss, La Bible, the Encyclopedie des sciences 
religieuses by the elite of French Protestant 
thinkers, the historical and philosophical works 
of de Pressense and of other theologians and 
literary men, reflect great credit upon their 
intellectuality. Their women writers, Arvede 
Barine, Madame Coignet, Madame de Pres- 
sense, Madame Bersier, and many others have 
produced works of high moral worth, as broad 
in their human sympathies as they are loyal 
to their religious ideals. 

Another manifestation of their life is philan- 
thropy. They have over forty orphanages and 
their homes for the aged are equally numerous. 
It is difficult to give an adequate idea of their 
charities. The theological students of Paris and 



FRENCH PROTESTANTISM 349 

Montauban, aside from various other organisa- 
tions, have societies to visit and help the poor. 
The deaconesses have in their institution a pre- 
paratory department for training new sisters, a 
hospital, and a reform school for girls. There 
are several such schools for boys. The asylums 
of John Bost give shelter to the victims of the 
most harrowing forms of human malady — the 
incurable, the epileptic, and the insane. There 
are institutions for the deaf and the blind, homes 
for children whose mothers are in hospitals, chil- 
dren's summer outings, convalescent homes, 
homes near mineral springs like those of Vichy, 
or of Aix-les-Bains for special diseases, homes 
on the sea-shore for the tired and the sick, dis- 
pensaries, employment bureaus, loan associa- 
tions for the poor, societies of friends of appren- 
tices — these latter are very numerous, — a 
society of ladies visiting the sick in hospitals, 
societies of relief by labour, the Society of the 
Fourmis (Ants), which has 7,000 or 8,000 young 
women sewing for the poor, the asylum for 
young girls morally abandoned, the work for 
fallen women, the work among women in prison, 
a society to help liberated prisoners, an asylum 
for labourers without work, a society of colonisa- 
tion, a Christian home for servants, homes for 
w^orking-women, and many other kindred organ- 



350 FRANCE UNDER THE REPUBLIC 

isations. Most of this work might have for its 
motto the beautiful inscription which the Ber- 
nese poet, Haller, placed upon the hospital of 
his city, Christo in pauperibus. Whatever may 
be the imperfections and deficiencies of French 
Protestants, they neglect neither the sick nor 
the poor. The significant parting words of 
their pastors at the close of the service are: "Go 
in peace and forget not the poor." 

Another manifestation of French Protestant 
life is their missions. Long hampered by a 
legislation which prevented them from holding 
meetings of more than twenty persons — unless 
they had a permit from the authorities, and it 
was almost always refused — they, none the 
less, have accomplished much. In 1833 they 
founded the Evangelical Society of France, 
which is undenominational, and, later on, the 
Central Society, which is the home missionary 
society of the Reformed Churches. For many 
years the Evangelical Society of Geneva has 
worked in France, and the Free Churches have 
also an organisation for special missionary work. 
Altogether they have from 700 to 800 mission 
stations. In this no mention is made of the 
work of the Methodists, who have 25 or 30 
churches and an efficient corps of local preach- 
ers; that of the Baptists, with about a score of 



FRENCH PROTESTANTISM 351 

earnest churches; the McAll Mission with its 
halls, its methods, and its aggressive spirit; the 
Evangehcal Society of Brittan^^ among the 
sturdy, old-fashioned Bretons; the Mission in 
the High Alps among French Waldensians; 
the missions among the soldiers; the work 
among priests; the summer organisation of ser- 
vices in watering-places, etc. Very important are 
the missionary ventures of foreigners in France, 
and yet the most important force of church ex- 
pansion is from the churches themselves. 

If from home we pass to foreign missions, we 
find many establishments in Algeria and Tunis, 
on the northern side of what is fast becoming 
"Black France." Protestants have missions in 
Senegal and the French Congo. The French 
missionaries have evangelised and civihsed the 
Basutos in South Africa. This is one of the 
most perfect missionary triumphs in any part 
of the world. Then they have entered the 
Zambesi Valley, the most deadly field for mis- 
sionaries and one where numerous graves mark 
the end of the career of those heroic servants of 
God and humanity. During the last ten years 
French Protestants have centred their chief ef- 
forts in Madagascar where, with Norwegian and 
English missionaries, they are doing an admira- 
ble work through their hospitals for lepers, their 



S5^ FRANCE UNDER THE REPUBLIC 

schools, and churches. Moving eastward, we 
find them in Indo-China, then in the Pacific 
Ocean. They do a most efficient work in New 
Caledonia and in the Society Islands, in Poly- 
nesia. Without making any depreciatory com- 
parisons with the missionaries of any other 
nationality or church, it may be fearlessly as- 
serted that French missionaries have cultivated 
the heroic spirit to an unusual degree. Were 
we to look for the best traits of the old Hugue- 
nots in their descendants, we should find them in 
the French Protestant missionaries more than 
anywhere else. Their missions are their most per- 
fect work and the most praiseworthy display of 
their energy. They have refrained from all non- 
religious entanglements, and refused to be po- 
litical instruments of any government. Their 
missions are purely educational and religious. 

Another great manifestation of life is to be 
found in the men whom Protestantism has pro- 
duced. Senator Lodge has ably recognised this 
in the case of the Huguenots. "The largest 
number of men who have attained distinction, 
in this country, in proportion to their immi- 
gration, is undoubtedly given by France." He 
had in mind French Protestant exiles. Madame 
de Stael, the author of Corinne and of De 
VAllemagne, belonged to the Reformed Church. 



FRENCH PROTESTANTISM 353 

So also did Benjamin Constant, the political 
writer and orator; Cuvier, the founder of paleon- 
tology ; de Quatref ages, the distinguished anthro- 
pologist; Leon Say and Gide, political econo- 
mists; Guizot, de Pressense, Boutmy, Gabriel 
Monod, E. Doumergue, and Bonet-Maury,^ his- 
torians; Scherer, the great literary critic; Weiss, 
the brilliant dramatic critic, and Andre Michel, 
one of the foremost art critics of to-day; the two 
Stapfers, one a literary critic and the other a 
theologian; the three Sabatiers, unrelated except 
religiously — Armand, the biologist; Paul, the 
biographer of St. Francis of Assisi, and Auguste, 
the philosopher and theologian ; Adolphe Monod, 
Bersier, and Wagner, great preachers and moral 
teachers ; Delessert, who founded French savings 
banks; Henri Monod, who did more than any 
other man to organise national charities; Jules 
Siegfried, the pioneer in France of the national 
society of homes for workingmen; Admiral 
Jaureguiberry, well known for his bravery dur- 
ing the Franco-Prussian War, and Colonel Den- 
fert-Rochereau, for his heroic defence of Belfort. 
Many more might be mentioned who have been 
distinguished servants of France and mankind. 

^ Prof. Bonet- Maury has been the most efficient interpreter of French 
Protestantism to the cultivated English-speaking world. He has also 
done splendid service in Holland, Scandinavia, and Germany in the 
same direction, not to mention other work that he has done for France 
abroad. 



354 FRANCE UNDER THE REPUBLIC 

The high scientific culture of the professors 
of Protestant theology has inspired such re- 
spect that their faculties were supported by 
the government, as branches of French univer- 
sities, after the Catholic faculties had been 
cut oflF. Their ablest men take a high place in 
the world of thought. They have their mem- 
bers in every academy of the French Institute. 
They have professors in the College de France, 
in the Sorbonne, in the School of High Graduate 
Studies, in the School of Oriental Languages, in 
the School of Law, and in many other institu- 
tions of learning. They are largely represented 
in the Senate, in the Chamber of Deputies, 
and in the diplomatic service. The governor 
who perished at Martinique was a Protestant, 
and his successor, Governor Lemaire, is one 
also. The government knows the worth of 
Protestant integrity. Protestants are conspic- 
uous in the industrial and in the banking world. 
Baron Mallet, who died recently, was long the 
president of the Bank of France. A gentleman 
of large experience made the statement in pres- 
ence of the writer that they are in great demand 
as treasurers of corporations. This is certainly 
a tribute to their character. 

One prominent feature of this Protestant life 
— as of all Ufe — is its self -organising power. 



FRENCH PROTESTANTISM 355 

Whenever a religious function of any kind 
seemed desirable an organ to carry it on was 
created. Hence the numerous and timely or- 
ganisations formed under the Republic. The 
old synods, interrupted by Louis XIV at Loudun 
in 1660, were resumed by permission of the gov- 
ernment in 1872.^ Synods were an essential part 
of the ecclesiastical life of French Protestants, 
for without them there was no possible doctrinal 
or spiritual discipline. For the better part of a 
century two conflicting tendencies were thereby 
strongly developed, which practically gave rise 
to two different bodies with one common church 
machinery. They were constantly in touch; 
they worshipped in the same temples, as they 
call their meeting-houses; they even had the 
same officers, and often the same pastors. When 
the churches were large they could have both a 
conservative and an advanced pastor; there 
would be a rationalistic sermon in the morning 
and an evangelical one in the afternoon, or vice 
versa. By a natural grouping, the pastor of 
each side had his own followers; but that ar- 
rangement generated no little friction, and, fur- 
thermore, the small churches were obliged to 
have an evangelical pastor when many were 
Unitarians, or a Unitarian pastor when a large 

* Bersier, op. cit. 



356 FRANCE UNDER THE REPUBLIC 

contingent was evangelical. This was an ab- 
normal situation, bound to last as long as Prot- 
estants held their State relations. 

In 1878 the Evangelicals organised what they 
called the Synode officieux, a working synod of 
their own forces, while they remained in the 
State ecclesiastical body. By so doing they 
could control all the works which they sustained 
so liberally. Within the State organisation they 
introduced a strictly Presbyterian one, looking 
after their religious interests. Thus, while their 
pastors were still paid by the State, and they 
continued to worship in buildings belonging to 
the State, in other respects they were free to 
direct and control every form of their Christian 
activities sustained by their own gifts. Simi- 
larly, the Liberals, among whom are some of 
the noblest spirits of the land, founded a kindred 
organisation which they called the Liberal Dele- 
gation. With all their culture and their claims 
that they alone can meet modern religious in- 
quiries, their endeavours to reach the people 
have been frail and spasmodic, and the results 
disappointing. Their efforts to reach the church- 
less have been few and have lacked the aggres- 
sive spirit of apostleship. In the supreme test 
of religious earnestness — giving — they are far 
from liberal. These two organisations were 



FRENCH PROTESTANTISM 357 

tending to make the State ecclesiastical ma- 
chinery useless, when the Separation came to 
destroy it and left the two branches of French 
Protestantism virtually organised, and bound 
to steer by their respective charts. There are, 
therefore, now two — in fact three — organisa- 
tions of the Huguenot churches, the Evangelical, 
the Liberal, and a middle group of those op- 
posed to the ecclesiastical division, and who, 
endeavouring to prevent it, constitute a third 
group which is not likely to be long-lived. Steps 
have already been taken to federate all the 
eight hundred and fifty Protestant churches of 
the country, for the furtherance of their com- 
mon interests. The Reformes as a whole were 
not anxious to have the Separation, but now 
that it has come they have faced it courageously, 
not to say gladly. They have easily provided 
for their pastoral and church expenses, but it is 
to be hoped that their other works may not 
suffer during the period of transition. Hence- 
forth the relations between the pastors of the 
churches will be pleasanter, as they will be free 
from the old friction. Religion will be preached 
with more directness and more cumulative effect. 
There is work for both branches of the Hugue- 
not churches to do, and in doing it they should 
lay stress upon what Guizot called "the moral 



358 FRANCE UNDER THE REPUBLIC 

unity of Protestantism." There is among their 
members great potential moral energy. Taken 
all in all, they have a high sense of Christian 
living, and this is true of almost all practising 
Protestants. Though deficient in aesthetics, if 
we judge aright their architecture, their music, 
and their worship, their character stands high. 
Their conception of moral obligation is not like 
that of Dumas's character who says, "Duty is 
what you expect others to do"; these Reformes 
are primarily strict with themselves. As a rule, 
they are not very cheerful — gay. Like the 
English of Froissart, "they take their pleasures 
sadly." They have a quasi-worship of ances- 
tors, but that does not express itself in mere 
retrospective admiration, but in inspiration to 
rise over present difficulties. They have a keen 
sense of fairness and courage to assert it. After 
the Separation did they not defend Catholics .^^ 
For these sons of the Huguenots the problems 
of this event — great as they are — seem trivial 
when one remembers their present situation as 
compared with that of 1715, at the time of the 
efforts of Antoine Court to revive the churches, 
or even when Napoleon granted them his pro- 
tection. When one looks beneath the miseries 
of French Protestant life, one detects its great 
determinants not so much in well-defined theo- 



FRENCH PROTESTANTISM 359 

logical conceptions as a strong insistence upon 
thinking and also upon right thinking. Even 
the most conservative, who view the leading 
trend of modern thought with suspicion, are 
progressive and accept loyally all the advanced 
institutions of our day. As a whole, they affect 
those who have different doctrines and different 
ideals. Free-thinkers, like Renan and Taine, 
had their children taught by Protestant pastors. 
Renouvier became one of their best friends, if 
not one of their adherents. Some of the fore- 
most philosophers have come to sympathise 
with the liberalism of Protestants at large, while 
Taine requested that at his death the rites of 
religion should be performed by a Protestant 
pastor. On the other hand. Catholics of a lib- 
eral type have relaxed their former mistrust, 
read the best Protestant literature, come in 
touch with Protestant life, so that conservative 
Catholics have called attention to "Protestant 
inJSltrations " and sounded the alarm in presence 
of the "Protestant Peril." The truth is that 
Protestantism in France has been a mediating 
force between the extreme forces of Catholicism 
and Materialism, thereby bringing them nearer 
and inspiring them to some extent with its 
liberalism and its spiritual life. 

Its progress is a part of the general advance 



360 FRANCE UNDER THE REPUBLIC 

of French democracy, a movement which we 
have endeavoured to appraise. The opponents 
of existing institutions, though faithfully doing 
their part in the present struggle, have so long 
and so unfairly attacked the Republic that many 
foreigners have been misled. In hitting the 
Republic they struck France. Therefore, we 
have been obliged to give the government 
full credit for its good work. In fact, it is a 
part of the nation's life, and more could have 
been said about its far-reaching action, but our 
purpose has been pre-eminently to bring out the 
expansion of French powers, their evolution, 
their mental, moral, and religious transforma- 
tion. The best evidence of the accuracy of our 
judgment is the remarkable stand of France 
at the present time, bravely and calmly doing 
her duty, fighting not only for her liberty but 
for that of the world, withal grappling humanely 
with all the problems which the French victims 
of the bloody conflict force upon her. 



INDEX 



INDEX 



Administration, citizens not at the 
mercy of officials as during the 
Empire, 15; ballot-box free, 16; 
taxes collected with less expense 
and by gentler methods, 71. 

Africa, North, gradual control of, 
7; agreement with Spain con- 
cerning, 29; historical research 
in, 127. 

African university, 85. 

Agglomerations, rise of large, 50. 

Agricultural schools, 45. 

Agriculture, Ministry of, 45; 
causes of improvement in, 45; 
action of government, 45; mu- 
tual loan banks, 46; co-operative 
associations, 46. 

Alcoholism, taxes removed from 
hygienic drinks, 72; growth of, 
173; causes of, 175; work 
against it, 176. 

Algeciras, the Powers at, 29. 

Algeria, land still largely in posses- 
sion of natives, 38. 

Alliance franqaise, 92. 

Analysis of Separation Law, 292; 
of Organic Articles, 320. 

Anti- Clericals, often anti-reli^ous, 
194; have the educated on their 
side, 281; viewed State Church 
as storm centre, 282; now where 
Clericals were 38 years ago, 283; 
victorious, 287. 

Archibald, James F. J., opinion of 
French colonies in Algeria and 
Tunis, 39. 

Army, ignorance of officers in 1870, 
31; peace and war footing, 32; 
more democratic, 32; defensive 
purpose of, 33; humanisation of 
service, 33; transforms men of 
ignorant districts, 33; services 
in Madagascar, 33; services in 
Morocco, 33; services rendered 
to science, 34, 40; colonial, 38; 



expenses for reorganisation, 69; 
budget for, 70. 

Art, new conception of, 184. 

Art a VScole (U), 77. 

Arts, decorative, 105. 

Asceticism, passing away, 186. 

Assembly, National, 11. 

Association Law, 270, 272. 

Associations, agricultural, 46; dan- 
gers of, 18; associations culiu- 
elks, 299, 325. 

Assumptionists, 259. 

Asylums, 164. 

Atheism, before the present Re- 
public, 190; rejected unworthy 
conceptions of God, 194; not 
common, 195; exceptional in 
philosophical world, 198; some 
teachers wish to drop God from 
moral instruction, 248; charges 
of atheism of schools, 231, 244. 

Audiffret-Pasquier, d', 9. 

Aumale, Due d', 11. 

Automobiles, use in colonies, 41; 
making and export, 51. 

Avenel, Comte Georges d', 5, 14, 
52, 64, 66, 189, 194, 204. 225, 
244. 

Ballot-box, freedom of, 17. 

Banc des pauvres, 76. 

Banc des riches, 76. 

Banks, agricultural mutual loan, 
46; Bank of France, 60; paid- 
up capital of banks, 61; Bank 
of France and Bank of England, 
62; savings-banks, 67. 

Becquerel, 137, 150. 

Berenger, senator, 9; Law, 26; 
Manuel pratique, etc., 182. 

Bergson, 114; mobilism, 115. 

Berthelot, 8, 138, 149. 

Birth-rate, 175; Alliance nationale 
pour V accroissement de la popula- 
tion frauQaise, 175. 



363 



364 



INDEX 



Bishops, co-operation with orders, 
264; Bishop Dupanloup opposed 
law of religious freedom for all, 
284; Ultramontane opposed to 
Liberal, 290; protestation of 
Bishop of Cambray, 296; re- 
straints of the Concordat upon, 
320; attacking schools, 327. 

Bismarck, provoked war, 27. 

Bodley, France well governed, 17. 

Bonds, rentes, increased value, 73. 

Boucicaut, profit-sharing, 155. 

Bourgeois, Leon, 187. 

Breton, Jules, 44, 103. 

Briand, orator, 99; chairman of 
parliamentary committee, 316, 
317; praised by Comte d'Haus- 
sonville, 317; praised by M. 
Chaine, 317. 

Brieux, 92, 164. 

Broca, senator, 8; gift of anthro- 
pological collection, 86; anthro- 
pologist, 144. 

Brunetiere, critic, 96; orator, 99; 
self-made man, 223. 

Budget for 1910, 69. 

Buisson on religious character of 
schools, 244; Anti-Clerical, 281. 

Cabinet noir, 16. 

Carnot, 6. 

Cars, transformation of railroad, 
42; greater comfort, 212. 

Casimir-Perier, 6. 

Catholic, education, 91, 232; In- 
stitute of Paris, 109; universi- 
ties, 202; periodicals, 201; the- 
ological literature, 200; teaching 
of philosophy. 111; charities, 
165; criticism of "godless" 
schools, 231 ; criticism that com- 
mon schools would increase 
crime, 180; schools, sacrifices 
for, 231; education by the or- 
ders, 232, 256; budget under 
Mac-Mahon, 283; faculties of 
theology closed, 286; catechism 
taught in common schools, 313; 
catechism expelled from com- 
mon schools, 313; monopoly of 
liberty, 309. 

Catholics, speak of "Catholic 



France," 193; many nominal, 
193; have converts from free- 
thought, 200; emancipation of 
some of their priests, 203; never 
had a better clergy, 203; im- 
portance of laymen, 204; con- 
trolled France under Mac- 
Mahon, 283; intolerance against 
non-Catholics, 284; opposed to 
reforms, 286; liberty of, 307; 
using Law of Separation, 325; 
popular antagonism against, 312. 

Cereals, 42. 

Challemel-Lacour, 9. 

Chamber of commerce, better or- 
ganized, 57; founded in other 
countries, 57. 

Chambord, Comte de, 3. 

Chambrun, Comte de, 86. 

Charity, new meaning, 172. 

Chartreuse, distilling of, 258. 

Chateaux, protected, 101. 

Chauchard, gift of eight million 
dollars, 86. 

Chemistry, 138. 

Children, homes for, 165; garderies 
of, 166. 

Christianity, in philanthropy, 171; 
at one with free thought, 183; 
French ethics friendly to, 188. 

Civil service, 2, 14, 71. 

Clemenceau, senator, 9; created 
Ministry of Labour, 152; formula 
of life, 188. 

Clergy. Priest emancipated from 
Concordat, 20; priest's place 
taken by teacher, 88; priest only 
a priest now, 193; priest has lost 
secular power, 193; political de- 
feats of, 194; best France ever 
had, 203; priests in the mission 
field, 204; popular antagonism 
to, 281; ever has grievances, 
282; earnestness of priests, 252; 
monopoly of burials, 287; "priest 
enemy of his country," 311, 312; 
subjected by Concordat, 320. 

Coal, white, houille blanche, 48; ex- 
tracted, 49; used, 49. 

College de France, 84, 109. 

Colonial schools, 40; experimental 
stations, 40. 



INDEX 



365 



Colonies, increase of, 35; conti- 
nuity of purpose in colonial ex- 
pansion in Africa, 3G; develop- 
ment of railroads in, 36; capital 
invested in, 37; increase of trade 
in, 37; Archibald, J. F. J., on 
French, 39; and military de- 
fences, 41; reacting upon France 
39; organisations to help, 39. 

Combes, 9; anti-monastic work, 
275, 276; Clericals not helped 
by overthrow of, 292; leader of 
the Bloc, 315. 

Commerce, development of, 57, 
59; creation of Superior Council 
of, 57; creation of Ministry of, 
57; organisation of Counsellors 
of Foreign Trade, 58; organisa- 
tion oi attaches commerciaux, 58; 
organisation of societies of com- 
mercial geography, 58; founda- 
tion of Commercial Institute of 
Paris, 58; commercial journal- 
ism, 59; influence of economic 
studies, 59. 

Commission de Vinventaire general 
des richesses d'art de la France, 
101. 

Commune, 1, 2. 

Concordat, 20, 257, 263; disre- 
garded by Vatican, 288, 312; 
Gallican agreement, 264; other 
concordats, 295, 305; adiscordat, 
310; nature of, 320; annoyances 
to the clergy from the, 323; 
Napoleon not restorer of wor- 
ship, 337. 

Congresses, international, 30; Na- 
tional Pedagogic, 89; meetings 
of the Association frangaise pour 
Vavancement des sciences, 147. 

Conseils academigues; 90. 

Conservatives, inabihty to defend 
their cause, 14. 

Constitution, 5. 

Convicts, aims of laws toward, 25. 

Co-operative associations, agricul- 
tural, 47; societies, 155. 

Cotton culture in Africa, 40. 

Councils, general, 14. 

Crime, 173, 178; increase among 
soldiers, 179; increase of juve- 



nile, 180; juvenile crime under 
former regimes, 180; schools not 
responsible for, 180; agencies to 
oppose, 181. 

Criticism, 96. 

Culture, intellectual, 215; physical, 
218. 

Curie, Mme., 23, 139, 150. 

Darwin, overthrow of the ethics 
of evolution, 187. 

Debt, excuse for national, 69, 70; 
increase of, 72; debt owned by 
Frenchmen, 74. 

Decentralisation, 14; educational, 
88. 

Degrees, granting of, 283, 285. 

Delcasse, labours of, 28; policy 
continued by M. Pichon, 29; 
sacrificed to placate Germany, 
29; Anti-Clerical, 281; lenient 
with liberal bishops, 290; closed 
embassy to the Vatican, 290. 

Delphi, 126. 

Demolins, A quoi tient la supSrioritS 
des Anglo-Saxons?, 121. 

Denominations, freedom of, 20. 

Deputies, Chamber of, 10; causes 
of its character, 11; not hostile 
to religion, 13; Anti-Clerical 
group, 280, 

Deschamps, Gaston, 88. 

Deschanel, Emile, 8, 264. 

Deschanel, Paul, orator, 98; what 
Republic has done for working- 
man, 154; formula of life, 187. 

Didon, 190, 191, 192. 

Divorces, 156. 

Drama, 92; interpretation of, 107; 
philosophical intelligence in, 120. 

Dress, universally improved, 211; 
cheaper raw material, 211. 

Dreyfus case, 25, 32, 261. 

Du Lac, 80, 252, 253, 260. 

Dupanloup, Bishop, 8, 11; op- 
posed law of religious liberty for 
all, 284. 

Dutuit, artistic collection, 86. 

Economic individualism, 49; eco- 
nomic studies and commerce, 58. 
Economists, 122. 



366 



INDEX 



Education, budget for, 91; and 
agriculture, 1870 and 1910. 47; 
new educational buildings, 75; 
school and life, 76; co-operation 
of cities with the State, 83; new 
educational institutions, 84; new 
museums as instruments of, 86; 
high moral character of teachers, 
88; unions of teachers, 89; fed- 
eration of educational societies, 
89; Catholic, 91; criticisms of 
Catholics useful, 232; primary, 
number of pupils, 76; number of 
teachers, 76; elements taught, 
77; more practical, 77; associa- 
tions of pupils, 76; teaching of 
history in, 129; raised general 
education, 215; high morality of 
teachers, 233; secondary trans- 
formation of, 79; number of 
pupils, 79; teaching of phi- 
losophy, 109; university work, 
82; increase in number of chairs, 
82; increase in number of stu- 
dents, 82; increase in number of 
doctor's degrees, 82; revival of 
old universities, 87. 

Educator, greater freedom, 88; 
union of teachers and educators. 



oy; conferences 
teachers' conventions, 89; judged 
by his peers, 90; prominent edu- 
cators, 90; voluntarism of teach- 
ers, 76. 

Electricity, transmission of energy, 
48; lighting of London Exhibi- 
tion, 52; working power looms 
at home, 52. 

Empire, Second, abuse of power, 
15; candidatures offidelleSy 16; 
restraints upon the press, 21; 
restraints upon circulation of 
books, pamphlets, 22; restraints 
upon travel, 22; spying in hotels, 
22; workingman prevented from 
going to Paris, 22; isolated 
France, 26; ignorance of some 
army oflScers, 160. 

Engineering, great works of, 50; 
schools of, 54. 

England, French metallic works for, 
51; and France, 28; entente, 28. 



Equality. No distinction between 
rich and poor in schools, 76. 

Estournelles de Constant, d', 8. 

Ethnographers, errors of, 18. 

Exhibitions, in Paris, 30; agents of 
industrial progress, 56. 

Fallieres, 6. 

Farming implements, 44. 

Faure, 6; self-made man, 224. 

Federation of Societies against Por- 
nography, 182. 

Federation des amicales dHnstitu- 
teurs, 89. 

Ferry, Jules, 7, 38, 81, 237, 264. 

Fiction, 98; more philosophical in- 
telligence in, 120. 

Finances. Reports of Bank of 
France, 61 ; annual income from 
securities, 62; foreign invest- 
ments, 63; French foreign in- 
vestments under the Empire, 63; 
French annual receipts from 
other countries, 63; stock of 
gold, 64; advance of railroad 
securities, 65; expenses for army 
70; expenses for former arma- 
ments, 70. 

Finances of the Republic, criti- 
cisms of reactionaries, 68; in- 
crease of national debt, 72; de- 
crease of rates of interest, 73; 
reasons for national credit, 74. 

Fine Arts, 100; art in schools, 77; 
care of artistic monuments, 101; 
sculpture, 103; French art in 
other countries, 104; decorative 
arts, 105; popularisation of, 108. 

Food, more varied, 209; abundant, 
209; cheaper, 210. 

Forests, 60. 

Fouillee, 112, 145, 179, 187. 

France, Greater, 35i 

France. International relations, 
26; conciliatory policy, 28; 
treaties of arbitration, 28; and 
Russia, 28; at the Conference of 
Brussels, 30; at the Conference 
of Berlin, 30. 

Franco-Prussian War, and educa- 
tion, 75; caused large expenses, 
70. 



INDEX 



867 



Freedom of meetings, law, 17; of 
press law, 17; of trades-union 
laws, 17; of association law, 17; 
of literature, 22; increased for 
Catholics, 20; increased for edu- 
cators, 202; increased for phi- 
losophers, 110; increased for 
historians, 124; increased for 
scientists, 148. 

Freemasons, 265, 280. 

Free-thinkers, 183, 271, 280. 

French Academy, 97, 99, 171. 

French architects, work in Paris, 
102; work abroad, 102, 104. 

French artists, 103; abroad, 104. 

French Revolution, horrors of, 4; 
political liberaUsm of, 13; cler- 
ical privileges lost since, 283; 
orders before the, 252; unfair- 
ness of orders for, 256. 

Frenchmen, offer of eight billion 
dollars, 2; growing love of sea, 35; 
conscious of their economic posi- 
tion in the world, 56; have not 
economic advantages of Ameri- 
cans, 59; mostly owners of na- 
tional debt, 73; philosophy 
deepening thinking of, 119; 
travel more, 212; discovery of 
their own country, 213; nation- 
ally broader, 213; influenced by 
other nations, 214; travel abroad, 
215; knowledge of foreign lan- 
guages, 215; better educated, 
216; better read, 217; larger 
culture, 217; larger size, 218; 
greater longevity, 219; have 
faith in power of schools, 229; 
their suspicion of monasticism, 
261. 

Freycinet, de, 9. 

Functionaries, increase in number, 
71; justification of that increase, 
71. 

Galilean, theological professors 
contemplated in Concordat, 257, 
262; liberties gone, 202. 

Gallieni, as explorer, 34. 

Gambetta, 9, 11, 98; voiced na- 
tional feelings, 285. 

Gardens, colonial, 40. 



Gayraud, Abbe, Catholic charities, 
165; weakness of the faith of 
Catholics, 191; Anti-Clericalism 
of pupils of the orders, 265; de- 
fended casuistry in Parliament, 
242; electoral body Anti-Clerical, 
281; majority of voters want 
justice and equality, 307; liberty 
condemned by popes, 307. 

Germans, 1. 

Germany, war indemnity to, 2; 
and France, 27; and Morocco, 
30; Delcasse did not isolate, 30; 
Delcasse sacrificed to placate, 
29. 

Gibbons, Cardinal, makes Con- 
cordat a matrimony between 
Church and State, 310, 318. 

Gide, 122, 158, 159, 161, 232, 357. 

Gifts, large, Chauchard, 86; Du- 
tuit, 86; Broca, 86; Count de 
Chambrun, 86; Guimet, 86; 
Aumale, Due d', Chantilly, 101; 
Siegfried, Langeais, 101; Prix 
Osiris, 147; Osiris's to Pasteur 
Institute, 148; Kahn, Albert, 
148. 

Gobineau, ethnology of, 187. 

God, existence or non-existence, 
118; conceptions of, 194; re- 
fusal to oath in name of, 188; 
practical value in ethics, 198; 
attempts to eliminate word from 
text-books, 243; in Ferry's pro- 
gramme of instruction, 242; 
most text-books teach existence 
of, 244, 245; duties toward, 246; 

Godin, profit-sharing, 155. 

Gosse, Edmund, France not de- 
chning, 228. 

Grevy, 6. 

Guimet Museum of religions, 86, 
196. 

Guyot, Yves, 18. 49, 63, 66, 122. 
255, 259, 287. 

Hamerton, P. J., 102. 

Hanotaux, 2, 3, 43, 128. 

Haussonville pere, 9. 

Health, sanitation, 162; those pro- 
fessionally looking after, 217; 
physical culture, 218. 



368 



INDEX 



Hebrews, 206; their pulpits, 99; 
marriages with the nobility, 225; 
compelled to attend church, 284. 

History, freedom of investigators, 
124; helps to historians, 125; 
accumulation of materials, 125; 
excavations, 126; schools of, in 
other countries, 127; objectivity 
of, 128; historical reviews, 130. 

Homes for labourers, 160; associ- 
ated homes, 162; for the aged, 
164; more and larger, 207; light- 
ing and warming, 208. 

Houille blanche, 42. 

Housing the people, 160. 

Hydrophobia, 140. 

Illiterate, 76. 

Immortality, 239, 246. ^ 

Imperialists, prospects in 1871, 3. 

Industrial schools, 54. 

Industries, uses of water-power, 
48; number of persons connected 
with, 48; comparative progress, 
49; number of patents, 50; in- 
dustrial agglomerations, 50; 
metallurgic works, 50; textile, 
50; technical schools, 54; exhi- 
bitions, 55. 

Infants, protection of, 164; dimi- 
nution of deaths of, 219. 

Insane, 173, 177. 

Insurance, life, 159. 

Interest, rates since 1870, 61; in- 
terest on national debt paid to 
Frenchmen, 74. 

Inventors, more numerous, 50; in- 
crease in the number of patents, 
50. 

Iron, comparative production, 49; 
large structures, 50, 51. 

Janet, Paul, 109, 112. 

Jaureguiberry, 9. 

Jaures, 98. 

Jesuits, 259, 263, 265, 269; ex- 
pulsion of, 263, 264, 285, 312. 

Jesus, influence of his teachings, 
171; and French ethics, 188; 
name avoided by some writers 
of moral text-books, 245; "King- 
dom of," 260.' 



Jewelry, export of, 52. 

Judiciary, greater independence of, 
24; leniency, 178; juvenile 
courts, 154; courts fair with 
Catholics, 305. 

Laboratories for agriculture, 45; 
education, 87; in Paris and prov- 
inces, 132; for workingmen, 169. 

Laboulaye, 9. 

Labour, new conception of, 188; 
creation of Ministry of, 152. 

Labour- unions and suffrage, 16; 
organisation of unions, 155, 221; 
exchanges, 152; legislation, 153; 
employment bureaus, 155; profit- 
sharing, 155; old-age pensions, 
158; new conception of, 158; 
food of labourer, 208; wages of, 
210. 

Lamarck, 149. 

Lamazelle, de, 9. 

Land. More fertile, 42; in the 
south winter garden of France 
and England, 43; better dis- 
tributed, 47. 

Lapparent, 143. 

Lavisse, orator, 99; historian, 128, 
231. 

Laws. Deputies take initiative of 
new, 10; of freedom to hold 
meetings, 17; of freedom of the 
press, 17; of freedom of trades- 
unions, 17; of freedom of asso- 
ciation, 17; of freedom to cir- 
culate books, pamphlets, 22; of 
freedom to open saloons, 22; 
limiting absolute parental au- 
thority, 23; limiting parental 
authority over the marriages of 
their children, 23; taking away 
children from vicious parents, 
23; protecting women, allowing 
women to be witnesses, 23; al- 
lowing divorce, 24; giving a 
better chance to the accused, 24; 
granting counsel to the poor in 
civil cases, 24; easier revision of 
criminal cases, 24; principles of 
these, 25; of the Republic em- 
pirical, 25; Berenger Law of 
probation, 26; of liability of 



INDEX 



369 



employers, 154; providing in- 
spectors of mines, 154; freeing 
workmen from the livref, 154; 
regulating child labour in facto- 
ries, 154; of arbitration between 
employers and employees, 154; 
of Sunday rest, 154; of associa,- 
tion, 270; preventing orders 
from teaching, 276; of separa- 
tion, 292. 

Lectures, popular, 92; under the 
Empire, 170. 

Legacies, 65. 

Legislation, social, 2S; liberalising 
of, 23; changes in principles of, 
25. 

Legitimists, prospects in 1871, 3. 

Lemattre, 96. 

Lcroy-Beaulieu, Paul, 122. 

Lcroy-Beaulieu, Pierre, statement 
concerning wide distribution of 
stocks of Bank of France, 68. 

Liberty, for all, 17; for all religious 
bodies, 20; of Catholics, 307; 
Catholic monopoly of, 310. 

Libraries. Large place to history, 
129; of labour-unions, 155. 

Life, new, 207. 

Ligue de Veducation physique, 218. 

Ligue de V enseignement, 89. 

Lippmann, 137, 150. 

Literary criticism, 96. 

Literature, freedom of, 22; changes 
in, 95. 

Littr6, 8. 

Livret, note, 22, 154. 

Lot de sureti gSnSrale, 15. 

Loubet, 6; \'isit to Rome, 289. 

Lycies, 79; new spirit in, 79; new 
curricula, 80. 

Lyon, G., 116, 198. 

Mac-Mahon, under, 283, 285 ; Presi- 
dent, 6; and persecution oi non- 
Catholics, 265. 

Madagascar, soldiers teaching arts 
of peace, 33. 

Meetings, freedom to hold, 17. 

Meline, 9. 

Mercere, de, 9. 

Mines, 60. 

Ministries;, enlargements of, 6; con- 



tinuity of purpose of, 7; greater 
steadiness of, 7; creation of a 
Ministry of Agriculture, 45; crea- 
tion of a Ministry of Commerce, 
57; creation of a Ministry of 
Labour, 152. 

Missions, priests in the field, 204; 
protectorate of, 255; Protestant, 
350; rendered services to science, 
146. 

Mistral, founder of Arlesian Mu- 
seum, 87. 

Moissan, 138, 150. 

Monod, Gabriel, 128, 353. 

Monuments, restoration of, 101. 

Moral education, 235. 

Moral instruction, in schools, 78; 
planned by competent men, 236; 
helped by well-known writers, 
236; method of, 237; Jules 
Ferry programme, 237; text- 
books, 238; character of, 241; 
religious aspect of, 243, 244 ; re- 
sults, 250; catechism taught, 
313; in Catholic schools, 326. 

Morals, moral purpose in the 
drama, 96; growth of altruism, 
171; Superior School of, 181; 
Societies against Pornography, 
182; Societe des droits Vhomme, 
182; protection of animals, 183; 
growing sense of the importance 
of, 183; less chauvinistic, 184; 
idea of moral progress, 186; 
away from Darwinian ethics, 
187; larger sense of the word 
duty, 188. 

Morocco, Germany and, 29; sol- 
diers pioneers in, 31, 34; for the 
Moroccans, 184. 

Mun, de, political orator, 98; 
Catholic clubs, 170; noble man- 
hood of, 226; defence of orders, 
268; Catholic deputy, 281. 

Museums, new, 86. 

Music, 105. 

Mutual-aid societies, 157. 

Napoleon III, candidatures qffl- 
cielles, 16; schools under, 90; 
forbade teaching of philosophy, 
109; foimd money for opera but 



S70 



INDEX 



not for laboratories, 1S2; closed 
institutions of unauthorised or- 
ders, 263; abused by clergy, 264. 

Navy, 34. 

Newfoundland, 28. 

Neymarck, 70, 73; estimates of 
investments abroad, 63; esti- 
mates of ownership by the peo- 
ple of stocks and bonds, 67. 

Nobel prizes, for scientists, 150; 
for peace workers, 185 ; for liter- 
ary man. Sully Prudhomme, 97. 

Nobility, no longer so much con- 
tempt for work, 225. 

Nordau, Max, France not declin- 
ing, 227. 

Orders, dispersion of, 252, 277; 
Concordat did not contemplate 
their presence, 252; monks make 
siu'render of self, 254; zeal of, 
255; and education, 256; char- 
acter of their education, 256; 
seizing theological teaching, 257; 
becoming revivalists, 257; be- 
coming distillers, 258, 266; be- 
coming patent-medicine makers, 
258; unfriendly to government, 
260 ; a unit against Dreyfus, 261 ; 
Frenchmen suspicious of, 261; 
disregard of law, 262; own pupils 
often worst opponents, 265; skil- 
ful in handling money, 267; used 
dummies, 267; Catholic French 
kings opposed them, 270; sig- 
nificance of Association Law, 
271; settlement of property, 
274; prevented from teaching, 
276; monastic problem not set- 
tled, 278; teaching monastics 
compelled like common-school 
teachers to have diplomas, 286, 
316; compelled to pay inheri- 
tance tax, 286, 316. 

Organic Articles, 20, 252. 

Organisations, few under Empire, 
18; increase of number, 19. 

Orleanists, prospects in 1871, 3. 

Palais scolaires, 75. 

Paris, Comte de, character of, 3. 

Paris, peculiar municipal govern- 



ment, 15; exhibitions in,''^55; 
new museums, 86; new edifices, 
102; prizes to those erecting 
finest houses, 102; under the 
Empire and now, 102. 

Parliament and education, 76; al- 
coholism, 175, 

Pasteur and laboratories, 131; ad- 
miration for what had been done, 
132; laments Napoleon's indif- 
ference for laboratories, 132; his 
work. 140. 

Patents, increase in number, 50. 

Pensions, old-age, 158; given by 
government, 158; given by em- 
ployers, 159. 

Petite eglise, its rise, 326. 

Petroleum, 208. 

Philanthropy, 152; La Fourmi, 
156; homes for workingmen, 
160; homes for single women, 
161; work against tuberculosis, 
163; Pasteur Institute, 163; 
work for babies, 163; work for 
old people and helpless, 165; 
work of Catholics, 165; orphan- 
ages, 165; creches, 166; garderies 
of children, 166; cantines sco- 
laires, 166; abandoned children, 
166; white slaves, 167; women 
without work, 168; for mothers, 
168; for wounded soldiers, 169; 
evidence of, 169; spirit of, 171. 

Philosophy, freedom of, 108; teach- 
ing of, 109; greater freedom of 
teacher of, 110; in the Catholic 
schools. 111, 119; representa- 
tives of, 112, 113, 114, 115, 116; 
periodicals devoted to, 117; 
schools of. 111; influence upon 
literature, 120; force of order, 
120; new view of matter, 186; 
prominence of religious prob- 
lems in, 199. 

Poetry, 97; philosophical intelli- 
gence in, 120. 

Poincar6, Henri, 113. 135, 149, 
150. 

Pope, temporal power of, 27; and 
Separation, 296; petition of 
French Catholics to, 297; re- 
jecting Separation Law, 307, 327; 



INDEX 



371 



and the visit to Rome of Presi- 
dent Loubet, 289; power in 
France limited by Concordat, 
S20; not limited now, 321; de- 
fiant of Republic, 323. 

Postal service, increase of, 42; de- 
crease of rates, 72. 

Prefects, 14. 

Presidents, 5; mider clergy, 283. 

Press, liberty of, 18; restraints un- 
der Empire, 21 ; development of, 
21; educational work of some 
reviews, 92. 

Pressense, Edmond de, 8. 

Prix littSraire de Rome, 100. 

Prizes, literary, 99; Paris prizes 
to those erecting finest houses, 
102; science, 148; jtrix de vertu, 
171. 

Proces des Treize, 16. 

Profit-sharing, 155. 

Protestant pictures of religious 
conditions, 190; national synod, 
191. 

Protestantism, French, its rela- 
tions to Catholicism, 329. 

Puvis de Chavannes, 104. 

Quatrefages, de, 145, 353. 



real losses, 193; respect - of 
Trouillot for, 269; estrangement 
of masses, 812. 

Renan, 1, 75, 99, 245, 275. 

Renouvier, 111, 187. 

Republic, foundation of, 1; early 
prospects of, 5; its credit, 72; 
stability of this credit, 73; recog- 
nises birthright of child to edu- 
cation, 77; man counts for more 
in, 223. 

Republican rule a necessity, 5. 

Republicans, outlook after Franco- 
Prussian War, 4; secured maxi- 
mum of liberty for all, 17. 

Reveillaud, E., 13, 291, 320. 

Ribot, Alexandre, senator, 9, 270. 

Ribot, Theodule, psychologist, 116. 

Richepin idealising seafaring life, 
35. 

Roads and highways, 42; helps to 
agriculture, 46. 

Rod, 96, 98. 

Rodin, 103. 

Rostand, 96. 

Rouvier, 9. 

Russia, 26; French investments in, 
63; alliance, 28; better rela- 
tions between England and, 28; 
French colonies like those of, 35. 



Railroads in the colonies, 36; in 
France, 42; increase, 42; ad- 
vance of railroad securities, 65; 
earnings, 65; to become prop- 
erty of the State, 74; greater 
travel on, 212; increased trans- 
portation of freight, 212. 

Rambaud, A., 7, 15, 16, 58, 76, 78, 
89. 

Ranc, senator, 9; condemned un- 
der the Empire, 21. 

Reactionaries, 68, 229. 

Reinach, Joseph, 176. 

Religion, union of Free-thinkers 
and Free-believers, 182; under 
the Empire, 190; at beginning 
of the Republic, 191 ; intellectual 
interest in, 194; religious in- 
quiry in institutions, 195. 

I^eligious faith, decline under the 
Empire, 190; loss of faith, 191; 



Sabatier, Armand, 142. 

Sabatier, Auguste, 116, S5S. 

Sabatier, Paul, 13. 353. 

Sainte-Beuve, 96. 

Salons, 100. 

Saloons, 22. 

Sanitation, 162. 

Sardou, 96. 

Savings-banks, 67, 156; educate 
the people, 67. 

Say, 59. 

Scherer, 8, 96. 

School mutual-aid societies, 157. 

Schools, colonial 40; agricultural, 
45; industrial, 53, 54; commer- 
cial, 59; number of primary, 76; 
of design and decorative arts, 
78; unsectarian, not godless, 77, 
246; for women, 81; not respon- 
sible for increase of juvenile 
crime, 179. 



372 



INDEX 



Science, laboratories, 45, 87, 132, 
169;. observatories, 138; periodi- 
cals, 146; societies, 146; gifts for 
advancement of, 147; idealism 
of F., 149; prominence of, 150. 

Scientists, honours to, 150; mod- 
erate Anti-Clericals, 280. 

Sculpture, 103. 

Seciu-ities, advance in the securi- 
• ties of French railroads, 65. 

Sedan, 4, 75. 

Seignobos, 3. 

Senate, its distinguished members, 
8, 9; its character, 9; senators 
former deputies, 10. 

Separation, Law of, 13; principles 
discussed in early days of the 
Republic, 291; Bill of, 292; dis- 
cussed in Parliament, 292; voted, 
292; analysis of the Law of, 293; 
\ protest of the Pope, 295; Law 
more liberal than could be ex- 
pected, 296; Protestants and 
Hebrews accepted it, 298; rea- 
sonableness of the Law of, 299; 
church boards, 300; more liberal 
than that of Prussia, 300; salary 
of clergy, 300; confiscation of 
property, 303; Catholic judicial 
objections, 304. 

Sevres, superior normal school for 
women, 82. 

Shakespeare, 107. 

Siegfried, Jacques, 101. 

Siegfried, Jules, 9, 160. 

Simon, Jules, 8, 11, 264. 

Social reform, 152; improvement, 
170; the hard school, 171; deal- 
ing with convicts, 26; School 
;of High Social Studies, 181; 
changed conditions, 219. 

Socialists and teachers, 89; inter- 
nationalism of, 241. 

SociStS historique, 128. 

Society pour la protection des pay- 
sages de France, 213. 

Societies, colonial, 40; commercial 
geography, 55', educational, 89, 
92; scientific, 146; co-operative, 
156; mutual-aid, 157; legions of, 
.270; to encourage travel, 212; 
medical and surgical, 221; social- 



isation m every realm, 221; \»- 
boiu'-unions, 221; danger from 
large associations, 222; labour- 
unions not revolutionary, 223. 

Sociologists, 121. 

Spencer, 111. 

Steam-engines, comparative num- 
bers and power of, 49. 

Suicides, 173, 177. 

Superior Council of Public Instruc- 
tion, 90; bishops dismissed from, 
285. 

Taine, 1, 73, 109, 127. 128, 187, 
252, 264, 320. 

Tarde, 122, 180. 

Taxes, 72; to make up for services 
formerly paid but now free, 72; 
distributed more equitably, 72; 
increased proportionally to 
wealth, 72. 

Telegraph, 42. 

Telephone, 42. 

Textile fabrics, more artistic, 53. 

Thery, Edmond, estimates of finan- 
cial transactions, 62; French in- 
vestments abroad, 63; legacies, 
66. 

Thiers, 6, 11, 185. 

Timbuctoo, 37. 

Towns, increased freedom of, 15. 

Trade, in the colonies, 37; Foreign 
Trade Office, 57; Counsellors of, 
58. 

Trades-unions, freedom of, 17; 
favoured by government, 153; 
organisation of, 155; parts of a 
larger movement, 221; unrest 
of, 222; not revolutionary, 223. 

Travel, freedom of, 22; increase 
of, 212; helped by organisations, 
212; revealed attractiveness of 
France, 213. 

Trouillot, Georges, senator, 9; 
chairman of parliamentary com- 
mission on Law of Association, 
266; quoting from Theologiea 
dogmatica et moralis, 268; re- 
spect for religion, 269. 

Ultramontane, rule, 272; regime 
gradually introduced, 288; 



INDEX 



S7S 



agaifist liberal bishops, 290; 
Concordat not, SseO. 

Vatican, and the Concordat, 288; 
spiritual autocracy of, 202; and 
the nobis controversy, 289; and 
the Loubet visit to Rome, 290; 
closing embassy to, 291 ; Separa- 
tion hastened by acts of, 292; 
protestation against Law of Sep- 
aration, 295; objects to church 
boards, 300. 

Veuillot, Louis, formula of Cath- 
olic action in reference to liberty, 
309. 

Vineyards, 43. 

Wages, increased, 210; buying 
power of, 210. 

Waldeck- Rousseau, 19; quoting 
Hugo, 269; property of orders, 
274; anti-clericalism of, 275; re- 
spect for religion, 269. 

War opposed, 185. 

Washburne, E. B., 2. 

Water-powers, discovery of, 42. 

Wealth, nation's, 63, 64; earnings 
of railroads, 65; increase of lega- 
cies, 65; gauged by assessor's 
lists, 65; gauged by increased 



legacies, 66; better distribution 
of, 66; shown also by savings- 
banks, 67; owning of railroad 
security by the people, 62. 

Weaving, electric, 52. 

Wendell, Barrett, on religion in 
lycees, 246; friend's opinion of 
orders, 262. 

Women, laws concerning them, 23; 
voting in some cases, 23; able 
now to be witnesses, 23; highest 
positions accessible to them, 28; 
right to more equitable share of 
husband's estate, 24; right to 
her own wages, 24; may have 
divorce, 24; secondary schools 
for, 81; attendance of these 
schools, 81; protection of girls 
and mothers, 167; work of, 168. 

Workmen, and Napoleon III, 3; 
proportion of connected with 
industries, 48; greater freedom, 
153; helped by legislation, 153; 
by labour-unions, 153; profit- 
sharing, 156; mutual-aid soci- 
eties, 157; old-age pensions, 158; 
annuities, 159. 

Wurtz, 8. 

Zola. 98. 



